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Scores wounded in Thai terror bombing

Guarded by troops, investigators pick through the wreckage of the supermarket in Thailand's troubled south.

Guarded by troops, investigators pick through the wreckage of the supermarket in Thailand's troubled south. Photo AAP / Abdullah WangniGNI

Thai authorities are hunting at least 10 suspected Muslim insurgents over a car-bomb that wounded 60 people, including children, outside a supermarket in the troubled far south of the predominantly Buddhist country.

The attack on Tuesday in the city of Pattani destroyed the front of a Big-C supermarket, a discount store and food outlet, in what security analysts said was the biggest attack on a civilian target in months.

The ethnic Malay, Muslim-majority region, which includes the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat near Thailand’s border with Malaysia, has seen more than a decade of violence by Muslim separatist insurgents.

Police and the army have said the attack was likely carried out by the insurgents.
Lieutenant General Piyawat Nakwanit, chief of the 4th Army in the south, said at least 10 people were suspected of involvement, including the head of a tambon or local government unit in Pattani.

“We think there are 10 people involved in the car bomb … there might be more,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Police have issued an arrest warrant for one suspect. The military said it has not detained any suspects.

The insurgency has occasionally spilled into nearby Songkhla province, thronged by tourists from neighbouring Malaysia.

The three southern provinces were once part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until being annexed by Thailand in 1902.

Successive governments have tried with little success to stem the violence. Efforts to get talks going have come to nothing.

 

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