YALA, Thailand, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Thai forensics experts examining a series of bombs that went off in the Muslim far south at the weekend found they contained explosives from neighbouring Malaysia, police investigators said on Wednesday.

Chemical tests on some defused bombs had revealed the explosives to be an emulsion-based blasting compound sold in Malaysia under the name Emulex, a senior bomb squad officer told Reuters.

"They were emulsion explosives, mainly used in rock quarries," the police colonel said. They were the same as 90 sticks of Emulex police found in a rubber plantation in Narathiwat province last year, he added.

If true, a Malaysian link would underscore the need for Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur to bury their differences and work together to resolve a three-year Muslim separatist insurgency in the far south of Buddhist Thailand that has claimed more than 2,000 lives.

The region, an independent sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago, is 80 percent ethnic Malay Muslim and most feel more affinity with Malaysia to the south, than Thailand.

Another senior police investigator said some of the digital watches used as timers in the weekend bombs had warranty stickers on the back suggesting they came from a Malaysian distributor.

The watch models -- two types of Casio -- were not sold in Thailand, he said.

The militants, who have never made their aims public, had started using digital watches as timers as the police and the army became more proficient at jamming or tracing signals from mobile phones used as detonators, he said.

Coupled with several shootings, the string of bombs that detonated across the four southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and Songkhla killed eight people as Lunar New Year celebrations got under way.

Three Muslims had been arrested in connection with the blasts, the army said on Tuesday. However, security analysts believe the operation -- the most widespread in the three-year conflict -- might have involved up to 200 people.

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