Footage shows Bangkok bombing in mall minutes from ASEAN summit

BANGKOK: Footage emerged yesterday of the moment a bomb exploded in a Bangkok mall as the city hosted a major summit, the device apparently hidden inside a cuddly toy animal. There were nine successful or attempted bomb blasts on Friday throughout Bangkok which left four wounded as the city hosted a regional summit attended by top diplomats, including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Footage showed an explosion in a shopping mall minutes from the summit venue in the early hours of Friday morning, after it was apparently planted by a man dressed in a student’s uniform about 12 hours earlier. The man, wearing a fedora and face mask, entered a store in Siam Square mall at around 3:30 pm on Thursday, according to time stamps on the footage obtained by AFP.

Milling around the store, he stopped at a shelf full of cuddly toy seals and polar bears and fiddled with one of them for a few seconds before placing it back on the shelf. The next video recordings showed an explosion in the store originating from the shelf around 4:45 am on Friday morning, which caused a fire and a swirl of smoke as the store’s sprinkler system was activated. No one was injured and police confirmed the bomb blast. —AFP