BANGKOK (Reuters) – Malaysia has warned its citizens against travelling to southern Thailand after bombings and shootings by suspected insurgents killed five people and injured 13 others at the weekend.
The attacks occurred in the mainly ethnic Malay Muslim southernmost provinces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand, where more than 7,300 people have been killed since a decades-old separatist rebellion reignited in 2004.
Gunmen fired into a district office and detonated a car bomb in the Sungai Kolok border town of Narathiwat province, popular with Malaysian tourists, killing two Thai security volunteers, authorities said. In neighbouring Pattani province, a roadside bomb killed a volunteer ranger and two government officials.
“Malaysians are strongly encouraged to postpone non-essential travel to these areas for the time being,” the Malaysian foreign ministry said in a statement issued on Sunday.
About 4.9 million of the 35.5 million visitors to Thailand last year were from Malaysia, making it the second biggest source market for tourism after China.
Security has been tightened in the area, Narathiwat governor, Trakul Thotham, told Reuters.
“This kind of incident has not occurred in the last four to five years,” he said, adding and that there were still Malaysians in the area and there would be some impact in the initial stages.
(Reporting Panarat Thepgumpanat and Chayut Setboonsarng in Bangkok and Ashley Tang in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Martin Petty)
