Tag Archives: Violence

Assailant shot outside Israeli embassy in Turkey: officials

Riot police near Israeli Embassy in Turkey

By Umit Bektas and Jeffrey Heller

ANKARA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A suspected assailant was shot and wounded near the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Wednesday, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman and Turkish police said.

“The staff is safe. The attacker was wounded before he reached the embassy,” the spokesman said in a text message. “The assailant was shot and wounded by a local security man.”

Broadcaster CNN Turk said the suspect, whom it described as mentally unstable, had attempted a knife attack.

Turkish police told Reuters the assailant shouted “Allahu akbar”, or “God is Greatest”, outside the embassy before he was shot in the leg.

Police were examining his bag but had so far not attempted to detonate it, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The area outside the embassy had been cordoned off.

The assailant was apprehended at the outer perimeter of the secured zone around the embassy, the Israeli spokesman said.

Private broadcaster NTV identified the suspect as a man from the central city of Konya.

It was not immediately clear if there was a second would-be assailant, but Turkish media reports had initially suggested that there had been two attackers.

Turkey faces multiple security threats, including Islamic State militants, who have been blamed for bombings in Istanbul and elsewhere, and Kurdish militants, following the resumption of a three-decade insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast last year.

(Additional Reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Daren Butler)

Protest erupts after police kill black man in North Carolina

Protesters in Charlotte over the death of a black man

By Greg Lacour

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Protesters blocked a highway and clashed with police in Charlotte, North Carolina, early on Wednesday morning after officers fatally shot a black man they said had a gun when they approached him in a parking lot.

About a dozen officers and several protesters suffered non-life threatening injuries during an hours-long demonstration near where Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot by a policeman on Tuesday afternoon, police and local media said on social media.

Early Wednesday morning, protesters blocked Interstate 85, where they stole boxes from trucks and started fires before police used flash grenades in an attempt to disperse the angry crowd, an ABC affiliate in Charlotte reported.

A group of protesters then tried to break into a Walmart store before police arrived and began guarding its front entryway, video footage by local media showed.

Earlier in the evening, police in riot gear reportedly used tear gas on protesters who threw rocks and water bottles at them as they wielded large sticks and blocked traffic. One officer was sent to the hospital after being struck in the head by a rock, police said.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts urged for calm.

“The community deserves answers and (a) full investigation will ensue,” she said on Twitter, adding in a subsequent post, “I want answers too.”

Scott was shot by officer Brentley Vinson earlier in the day, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. The shooting occurred when officers were at an apartment complex searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant and they saw Scott get out of his vehicle with a firearm, the department said.

Vinson fired his weapon and struck Scott, who “posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers,” the department said in a statement.

Vinson, who joined the Charlotte police force in July 2014, is black, according to the department. He has been placed on paid administrative leave.

NATIONAL DEBATE

The fatal shooting came amid an intense national debate over the use of deadly force by police, particularly against black men.

Police did not immediately say if Scott was the suspect they had originally sought at the apartment complex. WSOC-TV, a local television station, reported that he was not.

Detectives recovered the gun Scott was holding at the time of the shooting and were interviewing witnesses, police said.

Protesters and Scott’s family disputed that the dead man was armed. Some family members told reporters that Scott had been holding a book and was waiting for his son to be dropped off from school.

Shakeala Baker, who lives in a neighboring apartment complex, said she had seen Scott in the parking lot on previous afternoons waiting for his child. But on Tuesday, she watched as medics tended to Scott after he was shot, she said.

“This is just sad,” said Baker, 31. “I get tired of seeing another black person shot every time I turn on the television. But (police are) scared for their own lives. So if they’re scared for their lives, how are they going to protect us?”

About 200 people gathered earlier Tuesday night for a peaceful protest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white officer killed an unarmed black man last week in an incident captured on police videos.

Lawyers for the family of Terence Crutcher, 40, disputed that he posed any threat before he was shot by Tulsa Officer Betty Shelby after his sport utility vehicle broke down on Friday.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Thousands flee fire at Greek migrant camp as tensions flare

Migrants stand among the remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday night after fire swept through tents and housing cabins during violence among residents, police said.

The fire was over by mid-day on Tuesday at the Moria camp which houses the 5,700 migrants on the island and many people had returned, though children had been transferred to other facilities, police said.

No casualties were reported from the fire and its cause was not clear.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, linked the fire to poor living conditions and a sense of insecurity among many of the residents.

Refugees and migrants on Lesbos are stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims have been processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over tough living conditions.

Greek media said the clashes on Monday erupted among residents following a rumor that hundreds of people would be deported.

Roland Schoenbauer, UNHCR’s spokesman in Greece, said people were “sick of waiting” in the camps. “They don’t know when their asylum claims will be processed. Some people feel they don’t have enough information,” he said.

A police official in Athens said two riot police squads had been deployed to the island.

Nearly 60 percent of the Moria camp, including tents and metal-roofed cabins, had been destroyed by the fire, a police official said. Work was underway on Tuesday to set up new tents, Police Minister Nikos Toskas said.

At least nine people were arrested on accusations of damaging property and causing unrest and were expected to appear before a prosecutor, a police official in Athens said.

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, September 20, 2016. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

OVERCROWDING

Panos Navrozidis, Greece director of aid agency International Rescue Committee, said the camp had been operating at over-capacity for months, with people crammed into the facility with limited access to water, and in conditions that do not meet humanitarian standards.

He criticized the system to process claims as “opaque and inconsistent” and said preferential treatment based on nationality led to tensions within the community.

Thousands have applied for asylum and the wait is long, ranging from weeks to months. Just over 500 people have been deported to Turkey since March but none of those who have requested asylum were among those, Greece says.

Despite a slowdown in arrivals from Turkey compared to last year, more than 13,500 migrants and refugees are now living on eastern Aegean islands, nearly double a capacity of 7,450.

“The situation is difficult,” Christiana Kalogirou, prefect of the north Aegean region, told Greek TV. “There is a great need for decongestion of the islands … in the future things could become much more difficult,” she said.

Including those on the islands, there are 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who made risky journeys in flimsy inflatable boats.

(Additional reporting Renee Maltezou; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

North Dakota governor calls in National Guard ahead of pipeline ruling

Protests about pipeline

(Reuters) – North Dakota’s governor activated 100 National Guard troops on Thursday ahead of an expected ruling by a federal judge on a Native American tribe’s request to halt construction of a crude oil pipeline that has drawn fierce opposition and protests.

The $3.7 billion, 1,100-mile (1,770 km) Dakota Access pipeline would carry oil from just north of land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to Illinois, where it would hook up to an existing pipeline and route crude directly to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The line would be the first to allow movement of crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The project has sparked violent clashes between security officers near the construction site and tribe members and other protesters. Opponents say the project will damage burial sites considered sacred to the tribe and pollute the area’s drinking water.

Energy Transfer Partners <ETP.N>, which is leading a group of firms to build the pipeline, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Protesters have included actress Shailene Woodley and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Some have spray-painted construction equipment, attached themselves to bulldozers and broken a fence, local authorities said.

Protests have been held in both North Dakota and Washington, D.C.

In a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, U.S. Judge James Boasberg granted in part and denied in part the tribe’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop the project, and said he would decide by Friday whether to grant the larger challenge to the pipeline, which would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits.

In advance of that decision, Governor Jack Dalrymple ordered National Guard troops to the area from bases in Bismarck and two other cities.

Some two dozen troops will help with security at traffic checkpoints – the closest of which is about 30 miles (48 km) from the protest site, said Guard spokeswoman Amber Balken. One hundred troops in all are ready to aid local law enforcement should protests become violent, she said.

“The Guard members will serve in administrative capacities and assist in providing security at traffic information points – the Guardsmen will not be going to the actual protest site,” Balken said.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Two women lynched, set on fire in Congo as ethnic tensions flare

Congolese soldiers stand guard as civilians chant slogans during a protest against the government's failure to stop the killings and inter-ethnic tensions in the town of Butembo

By Kenny Katombe

BUTEMBO, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Two Hutu women were dragged out of a minibus, lynched and their bodies set on fire by a crowd in eastern Congo, the local mayor said on Wednesday, as inter-ethnic tensions in the region surge in the wake of massacres that have killed hundreds of civilians.

The crowd in the town of Butembo, which is dominated by members of the Nande ethnic group, said the two ethnic Hutu women who were traveling by minibus in North Kivu province were militants, mayor Sikuli Uvasaka Makala told local radio.

Dozens have died in tit-for-tat killings by ethnic militia this year.

Ethnic rivalries, invasions by Rwanda and Uganda and competition for land and minerals among eastern Congo’s dozens of rebel groups have stoked conflict over the last two decades.

“I condemn the death of these two women,” Uvasaka said. “I insist: stop carrying out popular justice. Do you want to put the Nande community at risk?”

Migration by Hutu farmers from North Kivu through predominantly Nande areas towards Ituri province in search of more fertile land has fueled tensions, Otto Bahizi, a Hutu tribal leader from nearby Rutshuru territory, told Reuters.

The government blames the massacres over the last two years that have killed more than 700 civilians on Ugandan Islamist rebels but independent analysts say other armed groups are involved and ethnic rivalries likely play a role.

About 50 civilians were hacked to death this month outside Beni, some 50 km (30 miles) north of Butembo.

Hundreds of young demonstrators again took to the streets of Butembo on Wednesday to protest against the government’s failure to stop the killings. The army fired into the air and arrested about 15 people, a Reuters witness said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Aaron Ross in Kinshasa; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Louise Ireland)

Chicago’s detective force dwindles as murder rates soar

Cynthia Lewis, who is looking to get the case involving the murder of her brother Tyjuan Lewis solved, poses for a portrait in Homewood

By Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Every two weeks, Cynthia Lewis contacts the detectives investigating the homicide of her brother on Chicago’s south side almost a year ago.

They have had no success finding who shot Tyjuan Lewis, a 43-year-old father of 15, near his home in the quiet Roseland neighborhood of single-family houses.

The death of Lewis, who delivered the U.S. mail for 20 years, is one of hundreds of slayings in 2015 that have gone unsolved as the number of homicides soared in Chicago, piling pressure on a shrinking detective force.

In a city with as many as 90 shootings a week, homicides this year are on track to hit their highest level since 1997.

Chicago’s murder clearance rate, a measurement of solved and closed cases, is one of the country’s lowest, another sign of problems besetting police in the third biggest city in the United States.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest clearance rates of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Last year, Chicago police had 480 murder cases and solved 223 murders that had been committed in 2015 or before, for a clearance rate of 46 percent, according to Chicago police figures.

That is well below the average national rate of 63 percent, and the average rate of 68 percent for cities with populations of more than 1 million in the past decade, according to FBI figures.

Chicago, with a population of 2.7 million, has more shootings and homicides than any other U.S. city, according to FBI and Chicago police data, and more shootings by law enforcement than other major cities, according to police department figures on officer-involved shootings compiled by Reuters. Its police department is under federal investigation for the use of lethal force by its officers.

Detectives and policing experts interviewed this week said Chicago struggles to solve murders because of declining numbers of detectives, the high number of cases per detective and because witnesses mistrust the police and fear retaliation from gangs.

DETECTIVES OVERWHELMED

The number of detectives on the Chicago police force has dropped to 922 from 1,252 in 2008. One detective who retired two months ago said investigators are overwhelmed. Not all of the detectives are assigned exclusively to homicide cases.

“You get so many cases you could not do an honest investigation on three-quarters of them,” he said in an interview. “The guys … are trying to investigate one homicide and they are sent out the next day on a brand new homicide or a double.”

A tight budget and focus on putting more police on street patrol has contributed to the shrinking detective force. Because police departments are not all structured the same, it can be difficult to compare numbers. But Chicago has proportionally fewer detectives than other U.S. cities, according to data on some of the country’s biggest police forces.

About 8 percent of Chicago’s roughly 12,000 police are detectives. In New York City, which has a police department of 34,450, 15 percent are detectives. In Los Angeles, which has a police department of 9,800 sworn officers, 15 percent are detectives.

John DeCarlo, professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said better salaries also attract police talent from around the country and may be one of the factors that has helped drive higher clearance rates in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego.

FRAYED RELATIONS

Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy, who is due to retire soon, said to solve more murders the department was working with other law enforcement agencies, better using technology such as portable gunshot residue testing kits and increasing training for detectives on the use of surveillance video.

“The Chicago Police Department is taking the steps necessary to increase the number of detectives while also making available greater resources for existing detectives to do their jobs more effectively,” Roy said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.

Roy said the department was also working to restore public trust in the police. A task force set up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel found earlier this year that the police department was not doing enough to combat racial bias among officers or to protect the rights of residents.

Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said frayed relations between police and minority communities were not unique to Chicago. “But it’s of a different grade here,” Futterman said. “It’s incredibly difficult to solve violent crime if people won’t talk to you.”

Another detective who retired this year said an even bigger problem was the fear of gangs.

“People see homicides but they are afraid to get involved,” he said. “Detectives are out on an island. No one wants to help them.”

According to Chicago police data, 61 percent of homicides last year were gang related, the highest proportion for at least 10 years. Intelligence-gathering can be difficult because the city’s gangs tend to be fragmented.

Lewis, the mailman, was not in a gang and lived in a neighborhood where residents complain more about abandoned houses than gangs. “I hate to try and make his (case) sound different, but it is,” said Cynthia Lewis, 41.

His family is convinced he was killed by someone he knew and frustrated that police have not found even a suspect.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

Water shortages hit West Bank Palestinians, provoking war of words

Palestine children carrying water

By Sabreen Taha

HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) – At the peak of a searing summer, Palestinians living in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank are suffering from severe water shortages, prompting a war of words between Palestinian and Israeli officials over who is responsible.

The Palestinians say Israel is preventing them from accessing adequate water at an affordable price, and point out that nearby Israeli settlements have plentiful water supplies. Israel says the Palestinians have been allocated double the amount they were due under an interim 1995 agreement, and have refused to discuss solutions to the current problem.

For Palestinian Nidal Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta village council near Hebron, in the south of the West Bank, getting hold of water has become prohibitively expensive.

“The cost of a cubic meter for residents is 12 times higher than the normal price,” he said, shaking his head. “When water is available, it normally costs four shekels (about $1) per cubic meter, but now it costs 50 shekels.”

Israeli settlements are scattered on hillsides all around Masafer Yatta, a low-stone village on dry, rocky land. The settlements, with gardens and greenery, receive water from the Israeli utility provider via dedicated pipelines.

Younis said there was water in the ground near his village, home to around 1,600 people and many animals. But he said Israeli authorities prevented villagers from accessing the water by denying them permits to dig. Israel says unregulated digging of wells would do severe damage to the water table.

The villagers have approached the Palestinian Water Authority, which said it had made appeals to the Israelis, but the requests were apparently unanswered.

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a branch of the military that administers Palestinian civil issues, said Israel provides 64 million cubic meters of water to the Palestinians annually, even though under the 1995 Oslo accords it is only obliged to provide 30 million.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the Palestinians had consistently refused to meet to discuss water issues or work to resolve the long-standing problem.

“The Palestinian allegations… are simply a lie,” he said. “Under the Oslo accords we agreed to establish together a joint working committee on water. Unfortunately, the Palestinian side has refused systematically to participate.”

He added that the water needs in the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for a state together with East Jerusalem and Gaza, are greater than the infrastructure can handle.

Mazen Ghuneim, head of the Palestinian Water Authority, said the Palestinians had halted water negotiations with Israel five years ago because Israel had not frozen settlement building.

RURAL SHORTAGES

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which is working with the Palestinian Authority and Italian aid agency GVC to provide water to impoverished areas, has warned that up to 35,000 Palestinians are at risk because of the shortages.

Gregor von Medeazza, the head of UNICEF’s water program, said Israel had prevented villagers from building water-retention facilities and that 33 such structures had been demolished this year because they were built without permits.

Palestinians living furthest from urban areas have been the hardest hit, he said, often having to pay large sums to get private companies to truck water to their villages.

Some Israeli settlers have grown concerned about the lack of water available for Palestinians.

“Israel has not… made an effort to plan a long-term program for the next 10, 20, 30 years that will take into consideration population growth,” said Yochai Damari, head of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, a settlement body.

“Thank God Israel doesn’t have a shortage of water — there is desalinated water, there is water that is located elsewhere that needs to be drilled and extracted using pipelines and infrastructure that will provide water to the Arab community, and of course to the Jewish community.”

(Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Luke Baker and Dominic Evans)

Bomb attacks kill seven, wound 224 in southeast Turkey

Turkey blast

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Two bomb attacks blamed on Kurdish militants killed seven members of the security forces and wounded 224 people in southeast Turkey on Thursday, officials and security sources said, in a renewed escalation of violence across the region.

A car bomb ripped through a police station in the city of Elazig at 9:20 a.m. (0620 GMT) as officers arrived for work. Three police officers were killed and 217 people were wounded, 85 of them police officers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.

Offices in the police station were left in ruins and filled with smoke after the bomb exploded in front of the complex, destroying part of the facade, CNN Turk footage showed.

Less than four hours later, a roadside bomb believed to have been planted by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants tore through a military vehicle in the Hizan district of Bitlis province, security sources said.

They said the blast killed three soldiers and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia and wounded another seven soldiers.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings, but Yildirim said there was no doubt they were carried out by the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“The (PKK) terror group has lost its chain of command. Its elements inside (Turkey) are carrying out suicide attacks randomly wherever they get the opportunity,” Yildirim told reporters in Elazig.

“We have raised the state of alarm to a higher level,” he said at the scene of the attack, where a crowd chanted “Damn the PKK!”

The PKK has carried out dozens of attacks on police and military posts since 2015 in the largely Kurdish southeast in its fight for greater autonomy for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds.

Elazig, a conservative province that votes in large numbers for the ruling AK Party, had been spared violence until now.

Video footage showed a plume of black smoke rising above the city after the blast, which uprooted trees and gouged a large crater outside the police complex, which is situated on a busy thoroughfare in the city of 420,000 people.

In Van province, further east, two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded late on Wednesday when a car bomb exploded near a police station, the local governor’s office said in a statement.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack in Van, a largely Kurdish province on the Iranian border. The Van governor’s office said the PKK was responsible.

The southeast has been scorched by violence since a 2 1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year. Thousands of militants and hundreds of soldiers and police officers have been killed, according to official figures. Rights groups say about 400 civilians have also been killed.

On Thursday, PKK militants also attacked a police checkpoint in the southeastern town of Semdinli, near the Iraqi and Iranian borders, wounding two police officers, Dogan news agency said.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in violence since the PKK first took up arms in 1984.

(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Akin Aytekin and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Larry King)

Thailand avoids linking bloody insurgency to tourist site blasts

Police Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) official inspects the site of a bomb blast in Hua Hin, south of Bangkok, Thailand,

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Andrew R.C. Marshall

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Within hours of last week’s deadly bomb and arson attacks in Thailand, police and senior officials publicly ruled out any link to foreign militants and insisted the perpetrators, as yet unidentified, were homegrown.

But they also doubted the involvement of Thailand’s most violent homegrown militants: the Malay-Muslim insurgents fighting a bloody separatist war in the country’s three southernmost provinces, where similar bombings are grimly routine.

The official denial was unsurprising, said security experts. Admitting that southern insurgents could be involved in last week’s attacks would have serious economic and security implications for Thailand.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings on Thursday and Friday that killed four people and wounded dozens, including foreign tourists.

But some security experts have noted that southern insurgent groups have a track record for carrying out coordinated bombing attacks.

Since 2004, a low-intensity but brutal war between government troops and insurgents has killed more than 6,500 people in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat that border Malaysia.

Most people there are ethnic Malay Muslims, who for decades have chafed under the rule of Buddhist-dominated governments in faraway Bangkok.

Last week’s attacks had “nothing to do with the southern insurgency,” Colonel Yuthanam Phetmuang, a spokesman for the military’s Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) told Reuters.

Yuthanam denied the police were too quick to reach this conclusion, insisting it was based on “evidence collected and experience”. He declined to elaborate further.

POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, also Thailand’s defense minister, told reporters on Monday the attacks were “definitely not an extension” of the southern insurgency, but said the perpetrators “could have been hired from there”.

Security experts told Reuters that southern insurgents should remain the chief suspects, and questioned the government’s political motivations for so hastily ruling them out.

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.

“This could have a potentially huge economic impact,” she said.

If perpetrated by the insurgents, the attacks constituted the biggest and deadliest campaign yet outside their traditional area of operations, she said.

It could also indicate that security operations in the south had “seriously failed,” despite the military taking complete control after seizing power in a 2014 coup, she added.

Rungrawee stressed that the involvement of southern militants in the recent attacks “remains a hypothesis”.

NEW CONSTITUTION

The attacks came days after Thailand voted to accept a new constitution that paves the way for an election in 2017 and, say critics, enshrines the military’s already considerable power.

Thailand’s deputy national police chief on Sunday said the attacks were carried out simultaneously by one group on the orders of one person, but gave no further details.

Police on Monday said they had arrested one man for arson.

Suspicion over the attacks has also fallen on forces loyal to former populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was toppled in a 2006 coup. His sister, Yingluck, who took power after a winning a general election in 2011, was ousted in a 2014 coup.

His “red shirt” supporters denied they were behind the attacks. Security experts have said the involvement of the group, which is intensely monitored by the military, is highly unlikely.

Most Thais voters accepted the military’s constitution, but those in the three southern provinces overwhelmingly rejected it.

Analyst Rungrawee said this reflected deep local resentment of the Thai military and government.

TOURISTS TARGETED BEFORE

Violent incidents, including roadside bombings and shootings, take place almost daily in the southern border provinces

But they have spiked considerably so far this month, with 88 incidents of violence just in the first 10 days of August in the three southern provinces and neighboring Songkhla province, according to Deep South Watch (DSW), a Pattani-based group which monitors the conflict.

This compared with 32 incidents in all of August 2015, the lowest level of violence for 12 years.

Southern insurgents have targeted tourist sites before. Thirteen people were killed and more than 300 wounded in March 2012 when multiple bombs went off in Yala and Hat Yai, a bustling commercial center north of the three southern provinces popular with Malaysian visitors.

Peace talks between the Thai government and a handful of insurgent groups began in 2013 under the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, but have stalled since the military overthrew her.

Hardliners from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or BRN) have largely rejected the negotiations.

The BRN is the region’s most powerful insurgent group and says it fighting to establish an independent state.

(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpnata Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Pracha Hariraksapitak.; Editing by Bill Tarrant.)

Series of blasts hit resort towns in southern Thailand

Line of police looking for bombs

By Prapan Chankaew

HUA HIN, Thailand (Reuters) – A series of blasts hit three of the most popular tourist resorts as well as towns in southern Thailand on Thursday and Friday, killing four people and wounding dozens, days after the country voted to accept a military-backed charter in a referendum.

Four bombs exploded in the upscale resort of Hua Hin, about 200 km (125 miles) south of Bangkok on Thursday evening and Friday morning, killing two people and wounding at least 24.

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.

Hua Hin is home to the Klai Kangwon royal palace, which translates as “Far from Worries Palace”, where King Bhumibol Adulayadej, the world’s longest reigning monarch, and his wife, Queen Sirikit, have often stayed in recent years, until both were hospitalized.

Friday was a public holiday in Thailand to mark the queen’s birthday, which is celebrated as Mother’s Day.

No group has claimed responsibility, though suspicion could fall on groups fighting an insurgency in Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand.

SEVEN ATTACKS

Police had intelligence an attack was imminent, but had no precise information on location or timing, national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters in Bangkok on Friday.

“We just didn’t know which day something would happen,” he said.

Since Sunday’s referendum on the constitution, there have been attacks in seven provinces using improvised explosive devices and firebombs, Chakthip said.

The devices were similar to those used by separatist insurgents in southern Thailand, but that did not conclusively show they were the perpetrators, he said.

Police ruled out any links to international terrorism, as did Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement on Friday: “The incident is not linked to terrorism but is an act of stirring up public disturbance.”

Thai authorities beefed up security at tourism spots, airports and on public transport in Bangkok, while Thai junta chief and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha expressed frustration about the motives for the attacks.

“Why now when the country is getting better, the economy is getting better, and tourism is getting better? We have to ask why and who did it,” he told reporters.

TRAVEL ADVISORY

The attacks are bad news for Thailand’s tourist sector, which has been one of the few bright spots in a sluggish economy.

Tourism accounts for about 10 percent of gross domestic product and Thailand was expecting a record 32 million visitors this year.

Australia issued a travel advisory saying Australians should “exercise a high degree of caution” and warned: “Further explosions in any part of Thailand are possible.”

Two blasts on Friday morning in Hua Hin came after twin explosions on Thursday. One of those was near a bar in a narrow alley in the town late on Thursday, killing one Thai woman and wounding 21 people, Krisana said.

Ten of those injured in the Hua Hin blasts were foreigners, Krisana said, and eight of them were women.

The two explosions in Hua Hin late on Thursday were detonated by a mobile device, police said. The first took place 20 minutes earlier and about 50 meters from the second, but injured nobody.

Such twin blasts are common in the three Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Thailand, where a long-running insurgency intensified in 2004, with more than 6,500 people killed since then.

The three provinces near the border with Muslim-majority Malaysia soundly rejected the referendum on the new military-backed constitution, which passed convincingly in most of the rest of the country in Sunday’s vote.

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.

Hua Hin, Phuket and Phang Nga are far from the usual conflict zone, where attacks are typically aimed at the security forces and government representatives, not tourists.

In a separate incident on Friday, media reported two bombs had exploded in the southern province of Surat Thani, killing one person and wounding five. That came after a blast in Trang, also in the south, on Thursday, in which one person died and six were wounded.

No one was killed or seriously wounded on Friday in two blasts in the beach town of Patong on Phuket island or the two explosions in the beach province of Phang Nga. Authorities also defused two explosive devices in Phuket on Wednesday, police said.

The head of Interpol in Thailand, Police Major General Apichat Suriboonya, told Reuters it appears the bombs were meant more to send a message rather than cause death and destruction. “But the thing is, if you observe the bombs, they are not targeted to kill people but to send a message to some groups. It could be a domestic issue.”

Small bombs have been used frequently for attacks during periods of unrest over the past decade of political turmoil but have been rare since the military seized power in a 2014 coup in Thailand.

The latest bombings came almost a year after an attack on a Hindu shrine, crowded with tourists in central Bangkok, killed 20 people and wounded more than 120. Police have accused two ethnic Uighur Muslims from China for the Aug. 17, 2015, attack.

(Additional reporting by Orathai Sriring, Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Panarat Thepgumpanat, Surapan Boonthanom and Kitiphong Thaichareon; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Paul Tait and Bill Tarrant.)