Thai officials have said they believe the attacks were carried out locally and are not terror related.
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Col Krisana Patanacharoen of the Royal Thai Police said it was too soon say who was behind the attacks but “we are sure that it is not linked to terrorism”.
The most recent pair of explosions occurred outside police stations, killing a 52-year-old man and injuring three bystanders, the Bangkok Post reported.
That came after a blast in Trang, also in the south, on Thursday, in which one person died and seven were wounded.
Other blasts hit the tourist island of Phuket, a resort town in Phang Nga province, and Surat Thani, a city that is the gateway to islands such as Koh Samui in Thailand’s Gulf.
While Henrik Buuz, 62, of Denmark, said that while he might not have taken security seriously in the past, he no longer felt safe in the sunny beach town where streets were remarkably quiet for the beginning of a three-day holiday.
– PHUKET, 8:45 a.m.: No one is hurt in an explosion near a police traffic control booth. Two explosions this morning tit the clock tower in the town centre.
One person suffered minor injuries in the Phuket incident, authorities said.
However, such attacks have been rare since the military seized power in a May 2014 coup.
Due to the city’s royal connections, “the attack on Hua Hin seems like a direct affront at the Kingdom of Thailand”, said Paul Chambers, an expert on the Thai military.
Their identities and nationalities were not immediately being disclosed. Stores, shopping malls and movie theaters were closed.
Separate blasts were reported elsewhere in the south. Patong beach is lined with cafes and bars, while nearby Bang La Road is known as one of Thaliand’s more raucous nightlife hotspots. And two bombs exploded outside a market in Phang Nga, damaging two vehicles but causing no casualties.
Thai police are searching for clues which will lead them to the bombers who targeted the seaside resort town of Hua Hin, killing four and wounding almost 20 others, half of them foreigners.
Trang is on the fringes of Thailand’s deep south, where a low-level Muslim separatist insurgency has killed more than 5,000 people since 2004.
Violence has occasionally spilled over to areas outside the three provinces, which were part of a Malay sultanate until it was annexed by Buddhist-majority Thailand a century ago.
It was followed later that evening with two explosions close to each other in the beach city of Hua Hin at 10:15pm and 11pm.
“I$3 went to have a look and caught a glimpse of the scene but the whole area was in frenzy and people [were] advised to stay inside”, he said.
Brett said revellers fled to safety, adding there were “a good few people injured and the whole area just panicking … the whole area was just shut down with police cars, ambulances”. His sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who became prime minister in 2011, was ousted in the 2014 army takeover.
The three provinces soundly rejected the referendum on the new military backed constitution which passed overwhelmingly in the rest of the country in Sunday’s vote. The referendum also guaranteed five more years of military rule.
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Thai prime minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, told reporters the attacks were “an attempt to create chaos and confusion”.
