BANGKOK: A motorcycle bomb exploded in a market in Thailand’s southern Yala province on Monday, killing three people and wounding 18, a spokesman for the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) said.
The mostly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala in Thailand’s far south are home to a long-running insurgency by ethnic Malay Muslims fighting for autonomy in which more than 6,000 people have been killed since 2004.
“The criminals put a bomb in a motorcycle and placed it next to a market cart. The force of the explosion caused three people to lose their lives,” said ISOC spokesman Pramote Prom-in. The ISOC is a government security force that operates in the region.
No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack on Monday, which took place at a roadside morning market.
The region has seen hundreds of attacks since 2004, many of them deadly, but there had been fewer violent incidents of late.
Analysts who monitor the conflict say violence from the insurgency fell to a historic low in 2017 despite the fact that talks aimed at bringing peace gained little traction.
Thailand’s military government has tried to revive talks with rebel groups initiated by the previous civilian government, but they have gone almost nowhere.
Resistance to Buddhist rule from Bangkok has existed for decades in the predominantly Muslim southern provinces, waning briefly in the 1990s before resurfacing violently in 2004.
Bomb in market in Thailand’s south kills 3, wounds 18-security official
Bomb in market in Thailand’s south kills 3, wounds 18-security official
California joins UN health network following US departure from WHO
- California Governor Gavin Newsom decried the United States’ move on Friday, calling it a “reckless decision” that will hurt many people
CALIFORNIA: California said on Friday it will become the first US state to join the World Health Organization’s global outbreak response network following the Trump administration’s decision to pull Washington out of the WHO.
The network, comprised of more than 360 technical institutions, responds to public health events with the deployment of staff and resources to affected countries. It has tackled major public health events, including COVID-19. The state’s decision to join the network comes more than a year after US President Donald Trump gave notice that Washington would depart from the WHO. On Thursday, it officially withdrew from the agency, saying its decision reflected failures in the UN health agency’s management of the pandemic.
California Governor Gavin Newsom decried the United States’ move on Friday, calling it a “reckless decision” that will hurt many people.
“California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring,” Newsom said in a statement. “We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network.”
The governor’s office said he met with the WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, where they discussed collaborating to detect and respond to emerging public health threats.
The WHO did not immediately respond when reached for comment.
