A Widening Threat

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's promise last month to back away from heavy-handed measures in dealing with the insurgents in his country's southern provinces may have come too late. On April 3 a trio of bombs, detonated remotely and simultaneously by mobile phones, ripped through a hotel, a shopping center and an airport in the city of Hat Yai, killing two people and injuring more than 70, including four foreigners. The attacks came as a shock in part because Hat Yai, a regional commercial center 150 km north of Pattani, one of the provinces hardest-hit by the insurgency, had seen none...