Car bomb attack on southern Thai tourist island

On the night of April 10, 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.

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

The car exploded in the underground parking lot of the Central Festival shopping mall while night shoppers were still inside the building. The explosion damaged several nearby vehicles. Samui island disaster prevention and mitigation center director Poonsak Sophonpathumrak said local authorities suspect the car may have been stolen by Islamic 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 about 20 million visitors each year. The Thai government is still dealing with unrest caused by insurgent groups in three southernmost provinces, where the majority of Muslims are located near the Malaysian border, which has claimed more than 6,000 lives in the past decade.

According to News