A bomb exploded on Thursday outside a hotel in southern Thailand, killing four people and wounding up to 40 just two hours after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra cut short a trip to the restive region, police said.
The blast is believed to be the deadliest single bombing in a campaign of violence that has gripped the Muslim-dominated deep south for the past 13 months and left about 600 people dead.
”At present there are four people dead and 24 injured, including two critically,” police Superintendent Surasak Romyanon said by telephone from Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province, where the bomb went off at 7.05pm local time.
Another police officer on the scene, Lieutenant Colonel Vek Suwanarach, said the number of injured had risen to 40 after the bomb detonated in a pick-up truck outside Sungai Kolok’s Marina hotel, in an area crowded with open-air beer bars.
”All the dead are males and appeared Asian,” he said, although the nationalities of the victims could not be immediately established.
A wedding party attended by a number of local police officers had gathered on the third floor of the hotel, police said, but it was not immediately clear if wedding attendees were among the victims.
”This bomb was the work of militants who aim at large-scale public gatherings to cause maximum damage,” Siva Saengmanee, deputy of the Southern Border Province Peace-Building Command, told The Nation TV.
Sungai Kolok is a town along the Malaysian border whose nightlife district is routinely visited by scores of Thai and Malaysian tourists.
The bomb was the fifth to rock southern Thailand in 48 hours, coming just two hours after Thaksin flew out of the deep south.
His first trip to the Muslim-dominated region since his party won a landslide re-election earlier this month was cut short by a day, he said earlier, so that he could travel to a rally for a party colleague running in a by-election in north-east Thailand.
Thursday’s bombing was the fourth major blast in Sungai Kolok since last March, when a bomb ripped through the town’s nightlife district near the Marina hotel. Twenty-eight people, including several Malaysians, were wounded.
Two people were killed in a bomb blast there blamed on separatists in December, and in October another bomb killed a Malaysian tourist and a bar worker and wounded more than 20.
During his high-security trip, Thaksin vowed to crush the separatist revolt, which is seeking greater autonomy from the majority Buddhist Thai kingdom, within four years. — Sapa-AFP