A powerful bomb exploded Thursday about 100 meters (330 feet) from where senior officials were watching a military parade, wounding at least six people in an attack blamed on Muslim militants in insurgency-wracked southern Thailand, police said. About 300 civil defense volunteers were marching inside a stadium in the province of Narathiwat when the bomb exploded near where Gov. Pracha Tehrat, army officers and the regional police chief were standing, a police officer said. Five military personnel and a woman near the scene were injured, said the police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Muslim insurgents were suspected in the attack. Leaflets distributed in the area on Wednesday warned people to stay away from government officials and not cooperate with authorities. And in other Thai bombing news:
Two other explosions of remote-controlled bombs in the same province wounded four soldiers. In two other attacks in Narathiwat later Thursday, attackers used remote-controlled bombs to attack trucks carrying patrolling soldiers. In the first incident, a brief gunbattle broke out after the early-afternoon explosion, which wounded two soldiers. About an hour later in another location, two soldiers on a second truck were seriously injured by a bomb. The attackers escaped in both attacks. The attacks came a day after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed to maintain his tough policy against the escalating separatist rebellion, in which 650 people died last year.