Thai police on Tuesday hinted that the country’s worst terror attack at a downtown temple here was in retaliation to the destruction of a lucrative transnational network trafficking Uighurs from China’s restive northwestern Xinjiang province.
The August 17 blast at the popular Brahma shrine in Bangkok, and the second failed bombing a day later at a pier are connected to the July attack on the Thai consulate in Turkish capital Istanbul, national police chief Somyot Pumpunmuang said. The bombing killed 20 people, the majority of them Chinese tourists, raising fears of a link to militants or supporters of the Uighurs, ethnic Turkic-speaking Muslims, who say they face heavy persecution in their native Xinjiang.
Somyot said both incidents followed Turkish anger over Thailand’s forced repatriation of 109 Uighur Muslims to China in July.