Blast strikes Thai military hospital
Twenty-four injured in Bangkok on third anniversary of coup
BANGKOK // A bomb exploded at a military- run hospital in Bangkok yesterday, wounding at least 24 people on the third anniversary of a military coup.
There was no claim of responsibility for the blast at the King Mongkut hospital, also called Phramongkutklao Hospital, frequented by soldiers, their families and retired military officers.
The blast near the VIP section occured as patients and their families waited for prescriptions, sending smoke into the corridors.
“We found the pieces that were used to make the bomb,” said Kamthorn Aucharoen, commander of the police’s explosive ordnance team. Mr Kamthorn said it was not clear who was behind the attack.
“Right now, authorities are checking out closed- circuit cameras,” he said.
Sansern Kaewkamnerd, a government spokesman, said 24 people had been injured, most of them by flying debris.
Thailand has a long history of bomb attacks on symbolic dates carried out by militant political factions or separatists linked to an insurgency in the Muslim-majority south.
Regardless of the motive, the blast will raise the political temperature in Thailand where violence had declined under the military’s control.
Police are already hunting people behind two other small explosions in recent weeks, but have given contradictory information about the devices and probable suspects.
Deputy national police chief Gen Srivara Rangsibrahmanakul said the bomb had been hidden in a container by the entrance of a pharmacy. A battery and wires had been found at the scene, he said.
Yesterday was the third anniversary of a military coup that toppled a democratically elected government and ended months of unrest, including some deadly demonstrations. Since the coup, the junta known as the National Council for Peace and Order has clamped down on dissent and stepped up prosecutions under sedition and royal defamation laws.
The military has always played a prominent role in Thai life, but since the coup it has become embedded in society with officers more entrenched than under previous governments.
The military government has acknowledged that it wants to weaken political parties and maintain permanent influence over elected governments, partly through a new constitution approved by the king last month.
An election is due by the end of next year. The explosion c ame weeks after a car bomb at a shopping centre in the province of Pattani, near Thailand’s border with Malaysia, which wounded 61 people. Authorities blamed the car bomb on Muslimmilitants.
The far south of Thailand, which includes Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces, is home to a long-running separatist insurgency. Also yesterday, a bomb went off in Yala, one of the Muslim-majority provinces in the south, wounding military officers.