Bomb blasts kill one, wound 30 in southern Thailand

One Thai man was killed and 30 wounded as the result of two bombs exploded near a resort in the southern Thai coastal town of Pattani, authorities said, less than two weeks after the south was strike by a tide of unexplained bombings.

The first bomb blasts in the parking of Southern View Hotel caused no casualties, Police Lieutenant Colonel Winyu Tiamraj told Reuters on Wednesday. He said all the casualties were Thais.

“The second explosion came from a truck parked at the hotel entrance, opposite a karaoke bar and a massage parlour, resulting in one death and 30 injuries,” he said.

A spokesman for the Internal Security Operations Command of the military, Colonel Yutthanam Petchmuang, said the automobile was a purloined hospital pick-up truck that were mistaken for an ambulance.

The blasts came after a number of explosions targeting high profile beach resorts strike on seven Thai states in the south, killing four people and wounding dozens.

Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan immediately ruled out any connection between the newest bombings and those strikes.

“I am sure that the incident in Pattani last night has nothing to do with the seven provinces attacks,” Prawit told reporters at Bangkok’s Government House, without giving any further details.

Tourism is among the only increase sectors in Thailand, and accounts for 10 percent of an economy that’s fought under the stewardship of a military government that assumed power two years ago.

Since 2004, a low-intensity but savage war between insurgents and government troops has killed more than 6,500 individuals in the southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani that border Malaysia.

A referendum was rejected by the three states earlier this month on the new military-backed constitution, which passed in most of the remaining state.

Peace talks between some of insurgent groups and the authorities started under the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2013, but have stalled in 2014 since the military overthrew her.

Prawit said until there was peace in the area the military authorities wouldn’t enter talks.

“It must be peaceful first and then we can discuss,” Prawit told reporters.