Muslim militants fighting for a separate state in the south of predominantly Buddhist Thailand were suspected of carrying out a car-bomb attack on Tuesday outside a supermarket in the city of Pattani that wounded 60 people, authorities said.
A decades-old separatist insurgency in the largely ethnic Malay Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat has killed more than 6,500 people since 2004, according to independent monitoring group Deep South Watch.
Most of the wounded were discharged after receiving treatment but 21 with more serious injuries were hospitalised, Arun Prasertsuk, deputy director of Pattani Hospital told a local television channel.
The blast destroyed the front of a Big-C supermarket, scattering debris over a wide area and sending up a column of black smoke.