[MYMcvBgl]

The car bombings in Yala and Songkhla's Hat Yai district on Saturday were a coordinated attack, national police chief Pol Gen Priewpan Damapong said on Monday.

He was convinced of this after thoroughly inspecting the scenes of the bombings - the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel in Hat Yai and in municipal Yala.

Judging from the way the bombs were assembled, the timing of the blasts and other circumstances, it was clear the series of explosions were linked.

Pol Gen Priewpan said investigators at the Police Operational Centre for the Southern Border Provinces knew which groups of insurgents were responsible for the attacks, but he did not give details.

Sources in the police explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit that scoured the basement carpark floors of the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel said the bomb was concealed in a black Honda Civic car registered to Thanasorn Kuasuk, secretary of the Choeng Khiri tambon administration organisation in Si Sa Khon district of Narathiwat province.

Mr Thanasorn was attacked and robbed of his car and an M16 rifle on Oct 23 last year.

In Yala, the bombs exploded at two spots. The first was at the intersection of Chong Rak and Ruam Mit roads, where the militants planted a 15kg bomb concealed in a gas cylinder in a blue Isuzu pickup truck. The other site was in front of a 7-Eleven store where a similar bomb was planted in a Toyota Tiger pickup truck.

The bombs were detonated remotely by mobile phone. The other explosion was from an LPG-powered van parked near the intersection.

Three people were killed in the explosion and blaze in the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel's basement carpark. They were identified as Mrs Yupin Puthima, 38, Low Tsian Hock, a Malaysian man, and an unidentified Thai man.

More than 300 people were wounded, but only 133 were still being treated at different hospitals, a source said.

Ten people, five men and five women, were killed in the Yala bomb blasts and 112 wounded. Of the injured, 32 were still in hospital this morning.