At least 56 people including children were injured Tuesday when a pair of car-bombs exploded outside a department store in Thailand’s insurgency-wracked Deep South, officials said.

Although no fatalities were reported in the attack that left two victims severely injured, the bombings in and around the parking lot at the Big C store in the town of Pattani were the most devastating combined blasts in Thailand’s southern border region this year.

“Fifty-six people were injured … At least 33 people, mostly with shrapnel wounds, remain hospitalized,” Wichienchok Phetpakdee, a senior official with the Southern Border Province Administration Center, the region’s governing agency, told a news conference.

Officials said it was too early to determine whether separatist insurgents from the Muslim-dominated and Malay-speaking Deep South were responsible for Tuesday’s attack. But it followed a series of recent deadly attacks believed to have been carried out by hardcore members of Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the largest of the southern rebel groups.

Two bombs were used in the latest attack, police said. A small one went off in the parking lot of Big C – a major grocery and retail chain in Thailand – moments before a larger bomb planted in a pickup truck exploded.

“[T]he more powerful, second one exploded later,” Capt. Preecha Prachumchai, the deputy chief investigator of the Pattani police station, told reporters at the scene.

An eyewitness, who requested anonymity, told BenarNews that before the second bomb went off, he saw a driver jump out of a pickup truck that was parked near the store’s entrance.

A video posted by a witness on Twitter showed the second explosion cause a large fireball that sent bystanders running for cover. The blast blew away the store’s front.

Full story: BenarNews

BenarNews staff
Pattani, Thailand

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