Three bombs hit southern Thai town. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

HAT YAI, Thailand (Reuters) - Three bombs exploded almost simultaneously at two department stores and a hotel in the southern Thai town of Hat Yai on Saturday, wounding several people, police and the army said.

“I’ve had a report there might have been people killed too,” Southern Army commander Ongkorn Thongprasom told ITV. The television station said one person had been killed and Channel 7 put the death toll at two.

There was no immediate confirmation from police near a region where more than 1,700 people have been killed since January 2004 in separatist violence in the three far south provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala.

A Reuters reporter in the town, where at least one person was killed by a bomb at the airport in April last year, said ambulance sirens wailed as they rushed the wounded to hospital.

A police officer said several people had been confirmed wounded by the bombs in the town, but was unable to give a number.