Bangkok: A time bomb hidden on a motorcycle wounded 11 people seriously at a busy market in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, police and hospital officials said.

The bomb, weighing several kgs, also left 28 people with minor injuries in Yala province, one of three far south provinces near the Malaysian border, which have borne the brunt of four years of separatist insurgency.

This is clearly an attempt to intimidate people, intended to send a message that the authorities cannot protect them, army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch said.

The bomb went off a day after eight soldiers were killed and two wounded in ambushes by suspected separatist militants in neighbouring Narathiwat province.

A military hearts and minds campaign has failed to quell violence in the region, an independent sultanate populated largely by ethnic Malays annexed by overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

Nearly 800 people were killed last year, taking the death toll to nearly 2,800 since the latest chapter of the insurgency began in January 2004, Prince of Songkhla University's Deep South Watch think-tank said.

Source : UNI