Bryan Lee
Expat Street Photographer
Lucky escape for top Aussie cameraman
Time photographer among a dozen wounded as bomb goes off at booby-trapped crime scene in Yala early yesterday
Exclusive with Blenkinsop
Award-winning Australian photographer Philip Blenkinsop was among 12 people wounded yesterday when a bomb exploded at a crime scene where police were examining a burnt corpse.
"I consider myself to be lucky. We were all lucky," said Blenkinsop, who was on assignment for Time magazine covering the ongoing insurgency in the Malay-speaking far South with British writer Andrew Marshall.
The bomb was buried on the roadside next to the corpse of Prathep Srimai, 44, a staff officer at Yala municipality's health clinic, who was shot yesterday morning by suspected insurgents.
Police said Prathep's body was placed on a trolley and taken to where the bomb was hidden.
Authorities said the use of a second bomb as a booby-trap at the crime scene was a growing tactic directed at reinforcements or investigating officials.
Blenkinsop, who was only two to four metres away from the blast, was rushed to Yala hospital, where he was treated for shrapnel wounds.
"I want to thank the hospital staff, the governor and his deputy. They were wonderful and very professional," he said.
"My thoughts are with the family of the victim. They suffered much more than I did."
Blenkinsop has been based in Bangkok since the late 1980s and has covered a number of conflicts, including the guerrilla war in Indonesia's Aceh province, the communist insurgency in Nepal and the plight of the ethnic Hmong in communist Laos. He began his career with The Sunday Times newspaper in Perth and then The Australian in Sydney, before leaving to work in Southeast Asia.
From The Nation
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/05/23/headlines/headlines_30034939.php
