A Thai minister warned people in Muslim-majority southern provinces that returning missed calls could trigger bombs set by Islamic militants.
BANGKOK: A Thai minister on Tuesday warned people in Muslim-majority southern provinces that returning missed calls on their cell phones could unintentionally trigger bombs set by Islamic militants.
Thai authorities have begun tracing cell phone calls in a bid to track down suspects who use mobiles to detonate bombs across three provinces along the Malaysian border. But the minister for information and communication warned that militants could try to foil the two-week-old cell phone registry by calling a random number, hanging up and then wiring the handset to a bomb.
If someone returned to the call, the bomb would blow up and authorities would trace the call to an innocent person, Sora-at Klinpratum said. "If someone receives a missed call, the cell phone owner should double check with the mobile phone operator. There is no need to call back, because if anything goes wrong, the caller will be in trouble," Sora-at said.
The military issued a similar warning, saying that militants could find new tactics to thwart the cell phone registry. Since the November 15 deadline for pre-paid cell phone users to register their SIM cards, 90 per cent of the phone numbers in the far south have been added to the system, Sora-at said.
"Registering SIM cards can prevent bomb attacks, because at least we know who made every incoming and outgoing call," he said. Sora-at also said he would ask the Thai National Telecommunication Commission to discuss with Malaysian authorities on how to weaken cell phone signals from the neighbouring country, so that Malaysian phone signals don't cross into Thailand. "Thailand wants Malaysian signals to cover Malaysian areas only, and not to spill over into Thailand," Sora-at said.
Thailand's Interior Minister Kongsak Vantana confirmed that Thailand was seeking ways to block all signals from Malaysia, and that Thai authorities were negotiating a roaming agreement with Malaysia.
More than 1,000 people have been killed since unrest broke out in January 2004 in three Muslim-majority provinces along Thailand's border with Malaysia.
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