Bomb kills eight in southern Thailand And Two bomb attacks rock Baghdad

BANGKOK, 14 Jan—A powerful bomb exploded in Thailand’s restive south Monday morning, killing at least eight soldiers, the army spokesman said. The blast occurred in the Chanae district of Narathiwat province at about 9 am, said the spokesman, Col Akara Thiprote. More than 2,700 people have been killed in Thailand's Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and some parts of neighbouring Songkhla, since a long-simmering Islamic separatist insurgency flared in January 2004.—

BAGGHDAD, 14 Jan—Two roadside bomb attacks, including one targeting US troops, rocked the eastern part of the Iraqi capital on Sunday, wounding two people, a well-informed police sources said. Two roadside bombs went off in the afternoon in a quick succession in the crowde Beirut Square in Palestine Street, wounding two people and damaging several nearby civilian cars, the source told Xinhua on condiyion of anonymity. In a separate incident, a roadside detonated near a US patrol in the Mudhafar Square, at the entrance of Sadr City neighbourhood, the source said.—