One person was killed and 18 others were wounded, some of them critically, when a bomb exploded outside a noodle shop in Thailand's far south, police and witnesses said.
The explosion on Monday coincided with the anniversary of the death of dozens of local Muslims at the hands of Thai security forces, an event that kicked off the current insurgency more than a decade ago.
The bomb tore through a noodle shop around 1200 GMT in Pattani, a province in Thailand's Malay-speaking Muslim south.
One woman was killed, a Thai Buddhist and 18 were injured," Yutthakarn Chitmanee, an officer at Muang Pattani police station told AFP news agency.
An AFP photographer on the scene saw multiple casualties, some of them with what looked like life-threatening injuries.
The noodle shop was left a twisted wreck by the blast.
The attack also comes two months after a wave of coordinated bombings in tourist towns in Thailand's south that killed four Thais and wounded dozens, including foreigners, attacks the police linked to Muslim armed groups.
The kingdom's Muslim-majority "deep south", an area bordering Malaysia, has seen near daily bombings and shootings since the most recent wave of rebellion erupted in 2004.
On October 25 of that year 85 Thai Muslims were killed, most of them suffocating in over-crowded lorries after protests were suppressed by the military.
Source: Aje
No comments:
Post a Comment