BANGKOK, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Thai police in Samut Sakhon charged a Swedish-Lebanese man suspected of having links to the militant Hezbollah with possession of bomb-making material.
More than 200 police raided a three-story commercial building in the Mahachai area of Samut Sakhon on the southern coast of Thailand, around 20 miles from Bangkok.
Police named the suspect as Hussein Atris, a Lebanese-born man carrying a Swedish passport, a report in the Bangkok Post said.
National Police Chief Priewpan Damapong said Atris led police to the building where 5 tons of urea-based fertilizer and 10 gallons of ammonium nitrate were found on the second floor. Police said they also discovered many pairs of slippers, A4 paper and 400 electric table fans on the ground floor, the Bangkok Post report said.
Police are looking for two other men in connection with the cache of material.
Since Atris's arrest Thursday at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand's airport authority increased the security alert from Level Two to Level Three at Suvarnabhumi as well as Chiang Mai International Airport in Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand.
The Post report also stated an unnamed source in the Immigration Bureau said Atris's arrest was at the behest of Israeli authorities.
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra appealed for calm.
"I have been informed. I would like to ask people not to panic. We are currently in control of the situation," she said.
But Shinawatra reportedly appealed to the United States to repeal its recent travel advisory warning its citizens of terrorist activity in Thailand and to "keep a low profile."
Such advisories may dissuade tourists from visiting Thailand, an important source of capital for many businesses and the national treasury in general.
Last week, the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok issued the advisory that warned U.S. citizens that "foreign terrorists may be currently looking to conduct attacks against tourist areas in Bangkok in the near future. U.S. citizens are urged to exercise caution when visiting public areas where large groups of Western tourists gather in Bangkok."
U.S. citizens should "maintain a heightened awareness when out in public," the alert says. They also should "be alert for unattended packages and bags in public and crowded places and report any suspicious behavior to the nearest law enforcement personnel."
The suspected bomb-making arrest comes after two defense force volunteer members died and seven were wounded in an early morning raid by rebels on a factory in southern Thailand.
The attack took place about 3 a.m. in Narathiwat, which along with the neighboring provinces of Pattani and Yala, has a well-established network of insurgents fighting for degrees of regional autonomy and independence.
In September, human rights group Amnesty International heavily criticized rebels in southern Thailand for deliberately targeting so-called "soft" targets -- civilians -- in what could be considered war crimes.
Targets include "farmers, house workers, teachers, students, religious leaders, monks, civil servants or persons with vague or tenuous affiliation with the security forces or counterinsurgency efforts," the 64-page report "Unlawful Killings in Thailand's Southern Insurgency" said.
For the past 7 1/2 years armed and organized ethnic Malays -- nearly all Muslims -- have been fighting the officially and predominantly Buddhist Thai state.
The death toll includes 4,215 private citizens, 351 soldiers, 280 policemen, 148 teachers and educational personnel, seven Buddhist monks and 242 suspected insurgents, an earlier report by the Bangkok Post said.
The conflict also has produced 2,295 widows and 4,455 orphans and cost the government more than $5 billion in military operations with few successes to show for it, the report said.
Military operations in Thailand's restive southern provinces are being watched closely by the diplomatic community.
"We know from other conflicts that these conflicts cannot always be contained," British Ambassador to Thailand Asif Ahmad said.
"There may come a day when the troubles of the south will become the troubles of the region as a whole. And I dare say this, it might become a magnet for people to create havoc from elsewhere," Ahmad said in a presentation to a forum at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand last week.
"We've seen it in Yemen. We've seen it in Afghanistan. You cannot be immune," he said.
