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YALA (Thailand) - SEVEN people were wounded on Wednesday when bombs exploded outside two of the biggest police stations in Thailand's Muslim south, where a separatist insurgency is raging, police said.
The bombs exploded Wednesday morning outside the main police stations in the key regional towns of Pattani and Yala, police said.
Seven people, including three police, were wounded in the Pattani blast, which exploded in the heart of the region's most important town, police added.
The blast in Yala damaged the gate to the station, and appeared coordinated with a smaller blast that went off almost simultaneously in a local transport office, police said. No one was injured in the Yala blasts.
The bombings marked a rare attack in the downtown districts of key towns in the region along the southern border with Malaysia.
The explosions came one day after Thailand extended emergency rule over the region, where 3,300 people have died in four years of unrest.
Emergency rule gives security forces sweeping powers of search and seizure and broad immunity from prosecution, but human rights groups say it creates a climate of impunity that worsens the conflict.
The southern region was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension. -- AFP
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