Police and a Reuters reporter heard between four and seven explosions in quick succession in a commercial area of Yala, one of three provinces bordering Malaysia where more than 4,800 people have been killed in violence since 2004.

It was not immediately clear if the explosions were bombs.

Yala Governor Krissada Boonrat told local television the blasts were close to shops and busy restaurants in the predominantly Buddhist town, killing three people.

A hospital official confirmed that at least 34 people were wounded.

The explosions come two days after a bomb exploded at a supermarket in neighboring Narathiwat, causing a fire that killed five people.

The attack was blamed on ethnic Malay Muslim rebels, who shot dead soldiers in the same town just moments before the bomb exploded.

Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces were part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1909.

A decades-old separatist rebellion that was initially settled with an amnesty resurfaced in 2004 and the region has been plagued by near-daily bombings and shootings ever since.