Security tightened in Thai deep South during Songkran

BANGKOK, April 7 (TNA) - Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced Saturday that security in the Thai deep South will be tightened during the forthcoming Songkran Festival, which officially falls from April 13-15. Speaking during her weekly address, Yingluck insisted that more police and soldiers will be deployed and more surveillance cameras will be installed in the Thai far South during the Songkran Festival, in the wake of car bombing attacks in Yala province and Hat Yai in Songkhla province on March 31. Yingluck promised that her government will provide full financial assistance to the car bombing victims, acknowledging that only those seriously wounded at the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel in Hat Yai are still receiving treatment at local hospitals. According to official statistics, 10 people died and 145 others were wounded in the mid-day Yala car bombing incidents; while three people, including a Malaysian tourist, were killed and more than 400 were wounded in the similar car bombing attack at the Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel in Hat Yai on the same day. The Pheu Thai premier said that her government has informed fellow member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of the March 31 incidents in the Thai far South and her Malaysian counterpart has pledged to cooperate in hunting the suspected bombers if they have fled to neighbouring Malaysia. (TNA)