Thailand - series of blasts

[robert99]

Thailand blasts: More explosions target tourist towns - BBC News
Thailand bombs: Hua Hin resort hit by twin blasts - BBC News
A series of blasts across Thailand has targeted the tourist towns of Hua Hin, Phuket and other locations, leaving at least three dead and many injured.
No group has said it carried out the attacks, but suspicion is likely to fall on separatist insurgents.

The timing is sensitive as Thais mark a long weekend for the queen's birthday.

More reports of blasts are still coming in on Friday in what appears to be a co-ordinated series of attacks, but so far the locations include:

• Two blasts in Hua Hin where one person has died
• Two blasts in Surat Thani where one person has died
• Two blasts in Phuket where it is unclear how many are injured
• One blast in Trang where one person has died
• One bomb has been defused by authorities

Bombs rattle Phuket's Patong, Phang Nga
Numerous bombs in the South after Hua Hin blasts
Finger-pointing usually implicates followers of self-exiled ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra. But Friday's blasts were in anti-Thaksin regions, and all occurred in provinces where voters approved Gen Prayut's proposed new constitution last Sunday by huge majorities.
All of the bombs were reportedly detonated by mobile phone signals.
Bombs in Thai resort towns kill four, injure 19, including foreigners
Thailand’s military junta, which seized power in 2014 after a decade of at times deadly political unrest, has touted increased stability in the kingdom as a major accomplishment of its rule.

But the generals have been unable to quell a festering Islamic insurgency in the three most southern provinces – nearly 1,000km away from Hua Hin.

 

[robert99]

Same ol' faces - from 2007 Islam Watch - "Thailand: Islamist Insurgency with No End" by Adrian Morgan
Though not directly tied to terrorism, Saudi Arabia has certainly been pouring money into Muslim institutions in the south of Thailand, and promoting its narrow and uncompromising interpretation of Islam. Ismail Lutfi of the Islamic College of Yala, whom Hambali claimed to know, is a board member of the Muslim World League. This has led to Saudi funds being sent to his college.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/islamist-violence-in-mali-algeria-and-thailand/?_r=0
From 2013
“Further complicating the nature of the rebellion are deep links to local criminal gangs, especially those centered on drug and people trafficking."

 

[robert99]

China will be watching developments -
Is a Uighur Terrorist Buildup Taking Place in SE Asia?
Alli, along with six of the terrorist suspects nabbed days earlier, is allegedly part of an ISIS-affiliated terrorist ring that is linked with Bahrun Naim — an Indonesian ex-terrorism convict who has gone to Syria to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. (The remaining four belong to another terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which is aligned with al-Qaeda.)

Alli wasn’t the first Uighur arrested in Indonesia. In September 2014, the police detained four Uighurs who attempted to meet Santoso — the leader of the Mujahideen of Eastern Indonesia, Indonesia’s most-wanted man and a jihadist who has pledged allegiance to ISIS — in Poso, Central Sulawesi, and to join his militant group. Like Alli, they too had been in Thailand, where they obtained fake Turkish passports, and later went to Malaysia before heading to Bandung, West Java

The Uighurs, from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, are Muslims who speak a Turkic language. They have long complained of repression and violence at the hands of the predominantly Chinese Han majority. Thousands have fled China in recent years, including to Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Cambodia. The vast majority have no connection whatsoever to terrorism or Islamist extremism, instead claiming legitimate asylum. Their peaceful hope is to be allowed to go on to Turkey, but the Thai and Cambodian governments have instead deported them back to China, despite well-founded fears that the Uighurs will be persecuted on their return.

 

[robert99]

PressTV-Thai police ‘know who was behind blasts’
Police in Thailand say they have identified the perpetrators of the recent deadly blasts in the country, which left four people dead and over 20 others injured.

“Our investigation is progressing. We know who was behind it,” Piyapan Pingmuang, the Thai deputy police spokesman, said on Sunday without providing further details.

The spokesman said two men have been arrested and are being questioned over the multiple explosions, which occurred in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin on August 12, with a third individual questioned over a suspected arson attack in the country’s southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat.

 

[robert99]

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...y-wave-of-attacks-connected-one-arrested.html
"These acts were undertaken by a group in many areas simultaneously, following orders from one individual,” Pongsapat Pongcharoen, a deputy national police chief, told reporters.

He gave no further details on who police believe was responsible for the attacks and no group has claimed them.

Analysts say suspicion would inevitably on fall on enemies of the ruling junta aggrieved by the referendum results, or insurgents from Muslim-majority provinces in the south of the mostly Buddhist country.

 

[robert99]

About-turn on southern bombing suspects
Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon denied earlier reports of 17 detained southern bombing suspects, saying they were involved in other activities against his National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).
The 17 people for whom police sought arrest warrants, described by police as having "communist" leanings, were involved in long-standing activities against the NCPO and the government. They were the only group behind such activities, Gen Prawit said.
Authorities' action against the suspects had been continuing for a long period and had nothing to do with the multiple bombings and arson attacks in seven southern and central provinces late last week , he said.

Thai police name suspect in deadly tourist blasts, investigators working with Malaysia
Police identified a Thai man on Friday as a suspect in their investigation into attacks that killed four people and wounded dozens in a wave of bombings in Thailand’s south a week ago.

Deputy national police spokesman Kissana Phatanacharoen identified the suspect as Ahama Lengha from Narathiwat province near Thailand’s border with Malaysia.

A number of analysts say the most likely culprits are ethnic Muslim militants who have fought a lengthy but local insurgency in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces.

However, Thai Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said on Monday the attacks were “definitely not an extension” of an insurgency in the south.

Kissana said however, police were working with Malaysia to track down other suspects.

“We have received some answers from Malaysia that are useful and move the case forward,” he said.

 

[robert99]

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...-man-as-suspect-in-tourist-spot-bombings.html
Thai police say they have obtained an arrest warrant for a suspect in last week’s bombing and arson attacks that killed four people and wounded several dozen.

Police spokesman Col. Krisana Pattanacharoen announced Friday that a warrant had been issued for a man named Ahama Lengha because there was clear evidence linking him to the Aug. 11 and 12 attacks in seven provinces. Ahama is suspected of planting a bomb in Phuket’s Patong beach district, a popular tourist destination.

Ahama comes from Narathiwat, one of Thailand’s three southernmost provinces that have been buffeted since 2005 by a Muslim separatist insurgency that has taken more than 6,000 lives.

The government has not specified whom it believes responsible for the attacks, but analysts suspect they were carried out by southern separatists.

 

[robert99]

Junta rules out link between latest bombings in southern Thailand and earlier deadly attacks
Thailand’s military government said on Wednesday there was no connection between two bombings overnight that killed one person in the southern town of Pattani and a wave of deadly attacks on popular tourist spots in the south this month.

One Thai person was killed and 30 wounded when two bombs exploded late on Tuesday at the Southern View Hotel in the coastal town of Pattani, less than two weeks after a wave of as yet unexplained bombings hit seven provinces in the south.

Since 2004, a low-intensity but brutal war between government troops and insurgents has killed more than 6,500 people in the three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat that border Malaysia.