BANGKOK -- A car bomb on the Thai resort island of Samui has wounded seven people, including an Italian girl, police said Saturday, in a further blow to the country’s tarnished reputation as a top tourist destination.The bomb, packed inside a Mazda pick-up truck with
| Can someone explain to me why it's worth it for Thailand to try and keep these three crazy provinces? Either you have to go full-Buddhist on them or let them slither away and slink into Islamicist oblivion... |
Poonsak Sophonsasmorong of the island’s disaster prevention office said “six Thais and a 12-year-old Italian girl were treated for minor injuries”, adding that they had all been released from hospital.
Bomb squad experts scoured the debris early Saturday in the underground car park for clues about who might be behind the attack, which comes as Thailand’s junta tries to reassure tourists about the kingdom’s safety as a holiday destination following a coup last May.
Samui is a wildly popular tourist island in the Gulf of Thailand. Around 20 million visitors flock to Thailand each year and tourism is a mainstay of the economy.
Thailand’s southern provinces bordering Malaysia, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Samui, have long been home to a festering insurgency pitting Muslim rebels against security forces. However, a spokesman for the military’s Internal Security Operation Command (ISOC) said there had been no intelligence to suggest the rebels were planning to expand their sphere of operations.
But “it’s possible insurgents with bomb-making skills were hired to attack for other purposes”, Colonel Banphot Phunphien told reporters, without elaborating.