Thai authorities are hunting for at least 10 suspected Muslim insurgents over a car-bomb this week that wounded 60 people, including children, outside a supermarket in the troubled far south of the predominantly Buddhist country.
The attack on Tuesday in the city of Pattani destroyed the front of a Big C supermarket in what security analysts said was the biggest attack on a civilian target in months.
The ethnic Malay, Muslim-majority region, which includes the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat near Thailand’s border with Malaysia, has seen more than a decade of violence by Muslim separatist insurgents.
Police and the army have said the attack was likely carried out by the insurgents.
Lt. Gen. Piyawat Nakwanit, chief of the 4th Army in the south, said at least 10 people were suspected of involvement, including the head of a tambon, or local government unit, in Pattani.
“We think there are 10 people involved in the car bomb…there might be more,” Lt. General Piyawat Nakwanit, chief of the 4th Army in the South, told reporters on Thursday.
Police have issued an arrest warrant for one suspect. The military said it has not detained any suspects.
The insurgency has occasionally spilled into nearby Songkhla province, thronged by tourists from neighboring Malaysia.
The three southern provinces were once part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until being annexed by Thailand in 1902.
Successive governments have tried, with little success, to stem the violence. Efforts to get talks going have come to nothing.
Rights groups have accused the security forces of abuses against suspected militants and their supporters.
But Piyawat said troops maintained human rights and he defended the military’s search methods even though they would have to increase checks on vehicles.
“People in the area might be inconvenienced a little now because we’ll have to check every car, including ice cream cars, as those who cause violence keep changing their strategy,” he said.
