A series of blasts hit three popular tourist resorts and towns in southern Thailand on Thursday and Friday, killing four people and wounding dozens, days after the country voted to accept a military-backed constitution.
Four bombs exploded in the upscale resort of Hua Hin, about 200km south of Bangkok, on Thursday evening and Friday morning, killing two people and wounding at least 24.
Other blasts hit the tourist island of Phuket, a resort town in Phang Nga province, and Surat Thani, a city that is the gateway to popular islands such as Koh Samui in Thailand’s Gulf.
Hua Hin is home to the Klai Kangwon royal palace, where King Bhumibol Adulayadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, and his wife, Queen Sirikit, have lived in recent years.
Neither were there during the attacks, as both are in hospital in Bangkok.
Friday was a public holiday in Thailand to mark the queen’s birthday, which is celebrated as Mother‘s Day.
No group has claimed responsibility, though suspicion could fall on insurgents in Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand.
Arrests
Police detained two men for questioning over the attacks on Hua Hin on Friday, said police superintendent Sarawut Tankul, of the tourist police at the resort.
They were detained because CCTV footage showed them in the area “before, during and after the bombings”, he said, declining to give more details.
Preliminary evidence showed the bombs were low-explosive devices devised to “make an announcement” rather than cause maximum harm, he said.
Ahead of the blasts, police had intelligence that an attack was imminent, but had no precise information on location or timing, national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters in Bangkok on Friday.
“We just didn’t know which day something would happen,” he said.
Since Sunday’s referendum on the constitution, there have been attacks in seven provinces using improvised explosive devices and firebombs, Chakthip said.
The devices were similar to those used by separatist groups in southern Thailand, but that did not conclusively show they were the perpetrators, he said.
Police ruled out any links to international terrorism, as did Thailand’s foreign ministry, which said in a statement on Friday: “The incident is not linked to terrorism but is an act of stirring up public disturbance.”
Thai authorities have beefed up security at tourism spots, airports and on public transport in Bangkok.
“Why now, when the country is getting better, the economy is getting better, and tourism is getting better? We have to ask why and who did it,” Thai junta chief and prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.
Timeline
Two blasts on Friday morning in Hua Hin came after twin explosions late on Thursday.
The explosion that wreaked the most damage was near a bar in a bustling narrow alley in the town late on Thursday.
It killed one Thai woman and wounded 21 people.
The blast peppered the bar with shrapnel and carpeted the road with those too badly wounded to flee, said Chayanin Seedee (26), who manages the premises.
“Right now, we‘re just very scared,” she said.
Ten of those wounded in the Hua Hin blasts were foreigners, and eight of them were women.
Such twin blasts are common in the three Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Thailand, where a long-running insurgency intensified in 2004, with more than 6,500 people killed since then.
The three provinces, near the border with Malaysia, soundly rejected the referendum on the new military-backed constitution, which passed convincingly in most of the rest of the country in Sunday’s vote.
In a separate incident on Friday, media reported two bombs had exploded in the southern province of Surat Thani, killing one person and wounding five.
That came after a blast in Trang, also in the south, on Thursday, in which one person died and six were wounded.
No one was killed or seriously wounded on Friday in two blasts in the beach town of Patong, on Phuket island, or the two explosions in the beach province of Phang Nga.
Authorities also defused two explosive devices in Phuket on Wednesday, police said.
Irish response
The Irish Embassy in Bangkok said there were “no indications” Irish citizens were among the injured in the bombings.
The embassy asked for people to stay clear of affected areas and follow the advice given from authorities.
The Department of Foreign Affairs tweeted that anyone with concerns about family and friends in Thailand should phone (01) 4082000.
Reuters