Noodle shop bomb kills 1, wounds 18 in Thailand
PATTANI (AFP) — 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 Monday.
The attack 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 7 p. m. (1200 GMT) in downtown Pattani, a town 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.
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 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 Oct. 25 of that year 85 Thai Muslims were killed, most of them suffocating in over- crowded lorries after protests were suppressed by the military.
More than 6,600 people — mostly civilians — have since died in a conflict that pits ethnic Malay militants seeking greater autonomy against security forces from Thailand’s Buddhist-majority state.