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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion