This is now starting to inch it's way north. Pete
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NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) - Three Thai policemen were killed in a blast just hours after a wave of nearly 100 coordinated bomb and arson attacks in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, officials said.
Another officer was injured when the bomb exploded at a railway bridge in the southern province of Songkhla, around 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Bangkok. Police blamed the blast on suspected Islamic militants.
Songkhla is located next to Thailand's three insurgency-torn provinces where around 1,400 people have died over the past two years in separatist attacks and other unrest.
The railway attack came just hours after a string of 97 coordinated bomb and arson attacks across the region along the southern border with Malaysia late Tuesday that injured at least three people.
Tuesday's wave of incidents, the largest in more than a month in the restive south, targeted the homes of police and government officials, karaoke bars and a train station, officials said.
Most of the attacks only caused minor fires, with the exception of a rubber factory in Pattani province that burned for more than two hours.
"The latest attacks showed militants remained capable of launching coordinated attacks against the government," said Sunai Phasuk, a Thai consultant at Human Rights Watch.
"They also undermined the government's claim that they were making progress. In fact, the situation was getting worse," Sunai said.
The three provinces along the Malaysian border were an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed them a century ago, and separatist unrest has simmered ever since.
The latest violence erupted in January 2004. Officials say the bloodshed includes not only separatist violence but also fighting tied to organized crime, smuggling and local corruption.
The government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has tried to quell the insurgency but analysts have said that heavy-handed tactics have instead brought the opposite results.
"The government should stop its aggressive policy. Instead of relying on the military, the government should conduct more dialogue" with local people, said Srawut Aree, a senior researcher at Chulalongkorn University.
Chaichana Ingkawat, a political science professor at Ramkhamhaeng University, said he saw no quick end to the raging violence.
"Insurgents keep disturbing security in the region because they just want to express their frustrations with the government," Chaichana said.
Last month the government again extended emergency rule in the three provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala for three more months. Thaksin imposed emergency rule in the south in July 2005.
Under emergency rule, authorities can detain suspects for up to 30 days without charge, search and arrest people without warrants, and tap phones.
It also gives security forces broad immunity from prosecution, which human rights groups claim creates a climate of impunity.
In June, the panel tasked with finding ways of ending the violence in the south recommended that the government create a permanent body to mediate in the Muslim-majority region.
The independent National Reconciliation Commission, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the government in March 2005, also said local government officials should use the Malay language spoken by most of the residents in the region.
But the government has backed away from those and other proposals.