Car bomb injures 2 in Thai Muslim south

By P.S. Waller

BANGKOK (AA) – Two men were wounded in a car bomb explosion that also damaged several roadside vending stalls Sunday in an insurgency-plagued province in Thailand’s majority Muslim south.

Pol. Col. Kong-ath Suwankham, police chief of Sungai Kolok municipality in Narathiwat, said the explosion occurred at 6.10 a.m. (2310GMT Saturday) on a road near a platoon’s operation base, the Bangkok Post reported.

Eyewitnesses reportedly saw an unidentified man park a pick-up, which happened to be filled with homemade explosives, near the row of vending stalls before he was picked up by an accomplice in a motorcycle.

Two men sustained minor injuries in the explosion but have been admitted to a district hospital.

The car bomb also caused damage to nine vending stalls and shattered the glass windows of several nearby buildings, including a school.

A spokesman for the military’s Internal Security Operations Command told reporters that the morning bombing was likely insurgency-related.

Col. Pirawat Santhong also underlined that security will be tightened in the region after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which is set to end around July 5.

The southern insurgency is rooted in a century-old ethno-cultural conflict between the Malay Muslims living in the southern region and the Thai central state where Buddhism is considered the de-facto national religion.

Armed insurgent groups were formed in the 1960s after the then-military dictatorship tried to interfere in Muslim schools, but the insurgency faded in the 1990s.

It surged again in 2004 and rapidly escalated as the government of then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra severely repressed the rebels, leading to numerous human rights abuses.

More than 6,500 people -- Buddhists and Muslims -- have been killed and over 11,000 injured since 2004.