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“The first bomb was a grenade throne to the area outside the SBPAC office fence to draw people out,” Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a military regional security spokesman told Reuters.
“Then a car bomb about 10 meters from the first explosion went off. This was hidden in a pick-up truck where the perpetrators parked near the fence. Eighteen are wounded and no one died,” he said.
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The car bomb exploded ten minutes after the first explosion and among the wounded were five reporters, five police officers, two soldiers and other bystanders, Pramote said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Such claims are rare following attacks in the region.
The population of the provinces, which belonged to an independent Malay Muslim sultanate before Thailand annexed them in 1909, is 80 percent Muslim, while the rest of the country is overwhelmingly Buddhist. Conflict has flared on and off for decades as insurgent groups fought a guerrilla war to demand independence for the area.
A peace dialogue between the Thai government and the main insurgent group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) has resumed this year, after the group pull out of the process in 2014.
(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Peter Graff)