Car bomb attack on a tourist island in southern Thailand.

On the night of April 10th, a car bomb exploded at a shopping mall on the popular tourist island of Samui in Surat Thani province, southern Thailand, injuring seven people, including an Italian girl.

Scene of the car bomb attack on Samui Island. Photo: bangkokpost

The car exploded in the underground parking garage of the Central Festival shopping mall while night shoppers were still inside the building. The explosion damaged several surrounding vehicles. Poonsak Sophonpathumrak, director of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Center on Samui Island, said local officials suspect the car may have been stolen by Islamist extremists from one of the country's three southernmost provinces.

Samui is a popular tourist island in the Gulf of Thailand, attracting a large number of international tourists, with approximately 20 million visitors annually. Currently, the Thai government is still grappling with the instability caused by insurgent groups in three southern provinces, predominantly Muslim and near the Malaysian border, which has claimed the lives of over 6,000 people in the past decade.

According to the News