Sai Buri: At least six people were killed and 40 more wounded yesterday after a car bomb exploded in a packed market in Thailand’s insurgency-hit south, officials said.
Nurses scrambled to attend to the wave of bloodied casualties in the main hospital in Sai Buri town, a reporter at the scene said, adding blood donations were urgently required to help the wounded.
“There are six dead now, three men and three women,” a Public Health ministry official said in Bangkok, a toll confirmed by the local hospital.
“Altogether 41 people have been wounded either from shrapnel or burns,” she said, adding 19 “seriously injured” people had been ferried to bigger provincial hospitals.
An army spokesman said militants opened fire on shops in Sai Buri town centre shortly after Friday prayers in the Muslim-majority region to lure security forces to the scene, before detonating the bomb.
A complex insurgency calling for greater autonomy has plagued Thailand’s Muslim-majority far south near the border with Malaysia since 2004, claiming more than 5,300 lives, both Buddhist and Muslim, with near daily bomb or gun attacks.
The bomb, which sparked a fire that destroyed several shops, was meant as a warning to locals not to talk with security forces after nearly 100 suspected militants “surrendered” last week, according to Colonel Pramote Prom-in, an army spokesman in the south.
AFP
