One killed and 30 injured two weeks after a series of explosions hit three of Thailand’s most popular tourist spots

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

One Thai person was killed and 30 wounded when two bombs exploded late on Tuesday near a hotel in the southern Thai town of Pattani, police said, less than two weeks after a series of blasts hit the south.

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The first blast in a parking lot behind the Southern Hotel caused no casualties, Police Lieutenant Colonel Winyu Tiamraj told Reuters on Wednesday. All the casualties were Thais.

“The second explosion came from a truck parked at the hotel entrance, opposite a karaoke bar and a massage parlour, resulting in one death and 30 injuries,” he said.

A staff member at the town’s hospital said 32 people were injured, five of them critically. All are Thai nationals, the worker added, asking not to be named.

Most embassies warn nationals against all travel to Pattani because of the long-running conflict between the Buddhist-majority state and shadowy Muslim rebels seeking greater autonomy.

The blasts came less than two weeks after a series of explosions hit three of Thailand’s most popular tourist resorts and a town in the south of the country, killing four people and wounding dozens.

Tourism is one of the only growth sectors in Thailand, and accounts for 10% of an economy that has struggled under the stewardship of a military government that seized power two years ago.

No group has claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings, but some security experts noted at the time that southern insurgent groups have a track record of carrying out coordinated bombing attacks.

Since 2004, a low-intensity but brutal war between government troops and insurgents has killed more than 6,500 people in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat that border Malaysia.

The three provinces soundly rejected a referendum earlier this month on the new military-backed constitution, which passed convincingly in most of the rest of the country.

The latest bombings came a year after an attack on a Hindu shrine, crowded with tourists in central Bangkok, killed 20 people and wounded more than 120. Police have accused two ethnic Uighur Muslims from China of the August 2015 attack.