THAI police said its probe into the spate of bombings that killed four and wounded dozens last week have not indicated any links to Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), although the largest militant group from the south was widely speculated to be behind the coordinated attacks.
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At least two men have been held for questioning over the blasts in Hua Hin – struck by four of the bombs – and a third was arrested over a suspected arson attack in a separate province, police said.
Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said the attacks might have involved southern insurgents hired to carry out the bombings, but he added that the blasts were not an extension of a bloody separatist war in the country’s three southern-most Muslim-dominated provinces.
Speaking to TIME about the bombings last week, Zachary Abuza, an expert in Southeast Asian politics and security at the National War College in Washington, D.C., said that by targeting tourist areas, the bombers were “trying to do harm to the Thai economy”.
Even after the blast at Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok in August previous year that killed 20 people and injured almost 80, a lot of them foreign visitors, the government still would not use the word “terrorism” – for fear it would hurt tourism arrivals.
Yuthanam denied the police were too quick to reach this conclusion, insisting it was based on “evidence collected and experience”.
Admitting the possible involvement of insurgents would mean that violence, once largely contained in the south, was “spreading to other parts of the country”, said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an independent analyst who has written two books on the conflict.
Thailand’s junta, which seized power in 2014, and the police quickly ruled out global terrorism, saying the perpetrators were “local saboteurs”.
According to Pongsapat, the network behind the multiple bomb and arson attacks was believed to include 10-20 people and the incidents had no connection with unrest in the Deep South.
Former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was forced from office by the military in 2014, denounced the attacks, describing them as inhumane. It could be opponents of the increased role the Thai military have given themselves in governing the country through the new constitution.
Blasts on Thursday and Friday targeted some of Thailand’s best-known tourist resorts, just days after Thais voted to accept a military-backed constitution that paves the way for an election at the end of 2017.
A bomb attack on a Bangkok shrine on August 17 previous year killed 20 people, more than half of them Asian tourists, but it did not seriously undermine the industry.
Analysts say the rebels are frustrated over stalled negotiations with the military government.
It was nonetheless approved by 61 percent of voters, but rejected in the north and northeast – strongholds of the ousted government – and in the three insurgency-torn southern provinces. He said it would be a major embarrassment for the junta if the attack were to be an expansion of the ongoing Muslim rebellion.
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Phuket and Phang Nga were both hit in the attacks on Thursday and Friday, as was Surat Thani, a city that is the gateway to the popular islands in the Gulf of Thailand.
