Railroad bombing in southern Thailand, one killed
At least one railroad worker has been killed when a bomb blast hit a train in southern Thailand, a few weeks after a string of bomb attacks in the Southeast Asian country’s tourist resort towns killed several people.
According to police Captain Pramoj Juichuay, the deadly incident occurred when a bomb, planted on the tracks, was detonated as the train passed over it at a station in Khok Pho district in the southern province of Pattani at about 5:30 p.m. local time on Saturday.
The official said the blast ripped through half of the last carriage of the train, blew a big hole under the track and wounded three others, including two other railroad workers and a female passenger. He added that an investigation had been launched into the incident.
The train was on its way from Sungai Golak, a town located on the Malaysia-Thailand border in the neighboring province of Narathiwat, to Hat Yai, the largest city of Songkhla province, near the Malaysian border. Other reports, however, say it was heading toward the capital Bangkok.
On August 11 and 12, nine bomb blasts also rattled the resort town of Hua Hin and the southern provinces of Trang and Surat Thani, killing four people and injuring dozens of others. There were also similar explosions in the tourist island of Phuket.
Thailand’s junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha at the time called the bombings an attempt to trigger unrest in a country that has suffered from a decade-long political crisis.
The deadly attacks came ahead of a national holiday marking the birthday of Queen Sirikit and just before the anniversary of a blast in downtown Bangkok on August 2015 that killed 20 people, mainly ethnic Chinese tourists, in the deadliest such attack to hit the country in recent years.
The chronic instability and political division have haunted Thailand’s modern history. During the past decade, power has been shifting between a royalist army and its establishment allies on one side and elected governments led by or linked to self-exiled billionaire, Thaksin Shinawatra, on the other.
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