Simultaneous bus bombs in the Philippines:

MANILA, Philippines - Bombs went off on buses just a few minutes apart in the southern Philippines on Friday, killing eight people and wounding at least 14 others, police said.

All of the fatalities were on a bus that had just left the terminal in Bansalan, in Davao del Sur province, said Chief Superintendent Andres G. Caro II, the regional police director.

The second bomb went off at roughly the same time on a bus that had just released its passengers after arriving in Cotabato, police spokesman Wally Casuyo said. The explosives were under a seat behind the driver and caused only a small fire that was quickly extinguished without injury, he said.

A suicide car bomber in Afghanistan (and Associated Press stringer Rahim Faiez snidely intimates that a US soldier may have deliberately fired on a crowd afterward):

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of American contract workers and military personnel in the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least four civilians, officials said. A U.S. soldier opened fire afterward, killing one civilian and sparking an angry protest.

Maj. Sheldon Smith, a U.S. spokesman for troops training Afghan police and army soldiers, said American contract workers and military personnel were in the convoy. A spokesman at the U.S. base at Bagram said workers with DynCorp, who are helping train Afghan police, were attacked. Smith said the coalition “never intentionally endangers the lives of innocent Afghan civilians” but that the Taliban routinely and intentionally uses explosive devices in heavily populated areas. …

The Amerian soldier in a Humvee “mistakenly” opened fire on the crowd after the suicide attack, killing one civilian and wounding three, said Zalmai Khan, deputy Kabul police chief.

Afterward, a crowd of 50 to 100 people gathered, with some chanting “Death to America” and jabbing their arms at police.

And four more murders in the jihad in “restive” south Thailand.

NARATHIWAT, Thailand, June 16, 2007 (AFP) - Insurgents killed four people in separate shootings in Thailand’s restive Muslim-majority south, police said Saturday.

A Muslim man was gunned down at his home on Saturday in Narathiwat, one of three insurgency-hit provinces bordering Malaysia, police said.

Another Muslim man was killed in a drive-by shooting late Friday in Narathiwat, while a 33-year-old Buddhist was shot dead by rebels at a tea house in neighboring Pattani late Friday.

Also in Pattani, a 20-year-old Muslim man was killed in a drive by shooting Friday evening, police said.

The latest shootings come after Islamic rebels ambushed and shot dead seven soldiers Friday in one of the deadliest attacks this year on security forces in the south. More than 2,200 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in separatist violence that erupted in the south in January 2004.

(Hat tip: Sharmuta.)