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Bombing in Thai seaside resort town kills 1, injures 20

Andrea Tazzioli, 51, from Italy, poses for a photograph in San Paulo Hospital in the tourist city of Hua Hin, Thailand on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016.

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The popular tourist district, where the Thai royal family once built their summer palaces, was hit by bombs within a 24-hour period on Thursday and Friday.

Among the blasts, one small bomb exploded on a beach in Patong on the island of Phuket, and four others rattled the seaside resort city of Hua Hin, prompting businesses to shut their doors, streets to empty and anxious tourists to huddle inside their hotels.

Overnight and into Friday, bombs also went off on Phuket’s Loma Beach in southern Thailand and the southern provinces of Trang, Surat Thani and Phang Nga.

Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, Thai tourism minister, said the sector was resilient and would rebound from any impact fast, as it had in the past.

The site of one of the explosions in Hua Hin.

Embassies in Bangkok said four Dutch and three Germans were also injured.

One of the injured receives help in Hua Hin.

Every effort should be made to identify those responsible for the attacks and bring them to justice, Human Rights Watch said.

In a televised address on Friday, Thai prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the attacks “struck at the hearts of all Thai people”. “We have to band together and stay strong”.

“Why has it happened now when the country is improving”. Who (did it)? Who doesn’t want to see Thailand getting better?

“I was having a drink with other people, some of whom I knew, others I didn’t [know], and suddenly there was a huge flash of light and an explosion”, he said.

Those behind the attacks haven’t yet been identified.

Thai police are reportedly not linking the attacks to global terrorism.

“This might be linked to last night’s bombs, as it isn’t far away”, said Police Lt. Col. One person was killed and three were injured. The number of “yes” votes was especially high in the Buddhist southern provinces affected by the bombings, however “no” votes and abstentions prevailed in the deep south Muslim regions affected by insurgency.

On Thursday night, attackers in Hua Hin set off bombs in a busy street filled with bars and restaurants.

Officials haven’t connected this attack to last year’s bombing at a shrine that killed 20 people.

Gen. Danai Kritmetahwee, chief of the Thanarat Infantry Camp in Hua Hin, has told local media that all mobile phone SIM cards used in the Hua Hin bombing were bought in Malaysia, where numerous leaders in the southern insurgency are thought to live. Meanwhile in April, a auto bombing near Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui caused a number of injuries. Police are investigating a series o. The blast damaged a pair of phone booths and shattered the window of a nearby Starbucks.

The Thai political party whose governments have been overthrown by the country’s ruling generals denied on Saturday having any role in the bomb attacks on popular tourist destinations that killed four people and wounded dozens.

Separatist insurgents are likely to be suspected of carrying out the attacks, the BBC reported.

Thai security forces stand guard at the scene of a blast near Patong beach on Phuket. Two more detonated in front of two police stations half an hour apart in Surat Thani in southern Thailand, killing one and wounding three. “We should not make people panic more”, Prayut told AFP.

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Thaksin Shinawatra. The Red Shirt movement as a whole has been under extremely tight military monitoring both before and since the military coup of 2014.

Rescue workers retrieve three injured Chinese tourists from a white tour bus which crashed into a barrier while going down the Patong hill in Kathu district of Phuket on Friday morning