Police broaden search for Bangkok bomber
Man in yellow T-shirt possibly had accomplices
THAI police said yesterday they had still not established the nationality or whereabouts of the man they suspect bombed a popular Bangkok shrine, killing at least 20 people, suggesting the trail had gone cold after he was captured on CCTV at the scene.
Authorities said they were keeping watch for the suspect at the country’s borders, but police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang told a news conference it was not clear how many people were involved in the attack or if they were still in Thai- land.
“I don’t suspect one person, I suspect many people,” he said. “I am confident there are Thais involved, but I am not saying it is just Thais or that there are foreigners.”
On Tuesday, a day after the bombing at the Erawan shrine in the heart of Bangkok, grainy closed-circuit television footage was released showing a young man dumping a backpack at the scene and walking away.
The government says the attack was aimed at wrecking the economy, which depends heavily on tourism.
No one had claimed responsibil- ity for the blast, which according to the latest toll killed 20 people – over half of them foreigners from several Asian countries – and wounded more than 120.
Deputy police chief Jaktip Chaijinda said earlier that investigators believed the man on the video resembled a foreigner more than a Thai.
At least two foreigners had been interviewed in connection with the blast, police said.
Jangling nerves in the city on Tuesday, a small explosive was thrown from a bridge towards a river pier, sending a plume of water into the air, but no one was hurt. A government spokesman initially said there were “patterns” linking the two bombs, which both used TNT, but police chief Somyot said no direct connection between them had been established.
Major-General Pornchai Suteerakune, commander of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, said the bodies of almost all those killed at the shrine had wounds inflicted by ball bearings that were packed into the bomb.
The shrine, a blood-spattered scene of charred motorbikes and debris after the blast, was reopened yesterday.
The CCTV footage of the youth with a yellow T-shirt shows him entering the shrine compound with a backpack, sitting down against a railing and slipping out of the bag’s straps.
He then stands up and walks out, apparently holding a cellphone, leaving the bag at the fence
I don’t suspect one person, I suspect many people
as tourists mill about.
“From looking at the CCTV footage, we think that the man in the yellow shirt was maybe operating with one or two other people at the scene,” police spokesman Prawut Thavomsiri said, without elaborating.
Prawut earlier tweeted that police were offering a 1 million baht (R362 380) reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.
Police have not ruled out any group for the attack, including elements opposed to the military government, though they say it did not match the tactics of Muslim insur- gents in the south or so-called “red shirt” supporters of the previous administration.
“The attack did not bear the hallmarks of either southern Muslim separatists or red-shirt militants,” said Angel Rabasa, an expert on Islamist militancy at the Rand Corporation.
He said the attack could be the work of Islamic State, which has been expanding its reach in Southeast Asia, or an al-Qaeda offshoot.