A nationwide security alert was issued across Thailand after a bomb exploded outside a Bangkok shopping center that was also hit in a wave of New Year's Eve attacks, officials said yesterday.
The device blew up at a telephone booth in front of the Major Cineplex Ratchayothin shopping centre on the northern outskirts of the city late on Monday.
No one was injured.
PHOTO: EPA
"There is a row of three phone booths and the bomb exploded in one of them. The glass was shattered, but there were no casualties," Bangkok city police spokesman Colonel Supisan Pakdinarunart said.
The shopping center was among nine places in Bangkok bombed on New Year's Eve, blasts that killed three people and injured dozens around the capital.
Those attacks were followed by a coordinated arson and bombing spree across the insurgency-hit, mainly-Muslim southern provinces at the start of the Lunar New Year in February. The incidents left nine dead and 44 injured and were blamed on Islamic separatists.
Interior Minister Aree Wongariya declined to speculate about who might be behind the latest blast, but said he had ordered all of Thailand's provinces to boost security for the upcoming Buddhist New Year holiday.
"We have to provide security everywhere. I have ordered all provincial governors to be on alert, and have dispatched our informants to find out about any more possible attacks," he said.
The army has for months warned of possible attacks during Songkran, the Buddhist New Year celebrations, which begin on Friday and run for five days.
Police and security officials made efforts to downplay concerns that the blast was linked either to the unrest in the south or to the Bangkok bombings.
A senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that security agencies would divert some resources from the insurgency in the south to step up their guard in the capital during the holiday.
"We will give more importance to Bangkok rather than the three southern provinces," he said.
Police said they believed the bomb was meant to cause panic rather than damage, and could have been related to business disputes linked to the shopping center.
"It was a weak bomb that caused a loud noise, but was not meant to kill. That's different from the New Year Eve bombings," Bangkok Metropolitan Police Commander Adisorn Noncie said.
"It's unlikely that it was connected with the unrest in the south or the New Year bomb attacks. It was just someone wanting to cause panic," he said.
Thailand's top security official, Prakit Prachonpachanuk, who heads the National Security Council, said Monday's blast would not likely prompt the government to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok.
"We have to be prudent about declaring a state of emergency, and consider whether it's appropriate in response to the situation," he said.
Thailand's junta leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin had urged the government to declare an emergency in Bangkok to crack down on small protests against the military regime. So far, the government has refused.
The regime ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military-backed coup in September last year citing alleged corruption of the Thaksin government, and following months of political unrest.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS