Thailand Bombings Kill 4 and Wound Dozens, Most at Tourist Sites

A coordinated wave of bombings, a Muslim insurgency in the South, but they insist this isn’t “terrorism.” NYTimes:

BANGKOK — A series of bombings struck five provinces in Thailand, mostly at sites popular with tourists, on Thursday and Friday morning, in what a senior Thai official called a coordinated wave of attacks. Four people were killed and dozens wounded, the police said.

Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, a deputy prime minister in Thailand’s military-run government, said the attacks were “absolutely conducted by the same network.”

“I believe so,” he continued. “But the investigation is unclear on who actually did it, what are the reasons behind it.”

Another senior official later described the bombings as “local sabotage,” not terrorism. No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Two bombs went off at the Hua Hin resort in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province late Thursday evening, killing one woman and wounding 21 other people, the Thai police said. Hours earlier, a bombing near a market in Trang Province killed one person and wounded six.

On Friday morning, more explosions struck in Hua Hin, killing another person and wounding three, and at the popular resort island of Phuket, where one person was wounded, the police said. Two bombs also went off in the province of Surat Thani, leaving one person dead, and two near a market in Phang Nga, a southern province, though officials said there were no casualties there.

Police officials said several of the bombs were detonated by cellphone.

Bombings are not uncommon in Thailand’s deep south, where a separatist insurgency has raged, but they are rare in areas frequented by tourists, like Hua Hin and Phuket. These were the first such attacks since a bombing last August at a famous shrine in the heart of Bangkok that killed 20 people.

A spokesman for the national police, Maj. Gen. Piyapan Pingmuang, said there was no evidence of a connection to international terrorism. “This is different from the terrorism that has taken place in many countries,” he said. “This is local sabotage.”

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College who researches politics and security in Southeast Asia, doubted that southern insurgents were behind the blasts. “It’s been years since they have been able to pull off coordinated attacks across multiple cities and provinces, and when they have, it’s always been confined to the deep south,” he said in an email.