A car bomb in Muslim majority southern Thailand killed one person and injured 20 others Friday.
One victim was killed instantly in the blast caused by a car bomb in front of the Holiday Hills hotel in Yala province’s Betong district.
The injured were transported to a local hospital, some in serious condition.
No suspects have been apprehended.
Police Colonel Wasant Puangnoi told the Anadolu Agency that the bombing was unusual as violence usually picks up after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and not during.
The police colonel’s statements contradict the occurrence of attacks in the south earlier in Ramadan – which began in late June in Thailand.
On June 29, two bombs exploded in Narathiwat province while a villager was shot in Yala and an assistant village chief in Pattani.
The next morning, a 66-year old died after being hit by five bullets inside a mosque in Pattani.
Thailand's three Muslim-dominated southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have been wracked by a Muslim insurgency since Siam (the name of Thailand pre-1939) took control of what was then a Malay Sultanate following an Anglo-Siamese treaty in 1909.
The insurgency became a full-blown civil war in the 1960s when the Bangkok government tried to control education in the region's Islamic schools.
In January 2004, a rejuvenated movement launched a series of attacks that shook up the Thai State. Since then bomb attacks, drive-by shootings and ambushes have happened on an almost daily basis; almost 6,000 people – Buddhists and Muslims, military, teachers, civil servants and civilians – killed and 10,700 others wounded.
The atmosphere has also become more volatile after the Thai junta - which seized power on May 22 - overhauled the region’s administrative structure, putting the main civilian agency managing the region - the Southern Border Provincial Administrative Center - under military control.
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