Cops question witnesses over subway station blast
Police are reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance video and interviewing potential witnesses in their hunt for whoever left a pipe bomb near a subway station on Ratchadaphisek Road.
Pol Col Arkhom Chantanalat, acting chief of Huai Khwang police station, said officers are gathering and going through surveillance footage from the area of interest and taking statements from staff of a barbecue restaurant near the spot where the bomb was discovered.
He said an initial probe indicates the device was ready for use and hidden there in the wake of tightened security and checkpoints prompted by the bomb attack at Phramongkutklao Hospital on May 22.
The bomb was found on Tuesday afternoon by a motorcycle taxi who was on his way to fish in a quiet area behind the restaurant on the inbound side of Ratchadaphisek Road.
The device comprised a steel pipe about 20cm long with a fuse attached to a mosquito coil that had been ignited before being dampened and made ineffective by the rain. The pipe was in a green plastic basket inside a black plastic bag.
According to Pol Col Arkhom, the motorcycle taxi driver is a police volunteer who attended a security and surveillance training programme and who is trained to identify explosive devices.
The witness saw the green basket and thought it was a fish trap. He opened it and realised it was not, said Pol Col Arkhom.
“The device was ready for use and could have been hidden there to avoid a police check. The station has stepped up security lately,” he said.
A source close to the investigation said the package contained a pipe, a fuse and an amount of gunpowder, but had no ball bearings or small metal objects.
However, the source said some nails and nuts were found in the basket, and along with the steel pipe itself, it could have caused serious injuries if it had gone off.
The device was similar to one used in a bomb attack in Bangkok’s Min Buri district on March 29, 2014 and those used in blasts on a walkway linking a BTS station and Siam Paragon on Feb 1, 2015.
In the 2014 incident, two men were killed when a homemade bomb hidden in a motorcycle they were riding on accidentally exploded in a car park in Min Buri.
In the second incident, two homemade bombs exploded on the walkway and injured two people.
Police initially said these blasts were caused by a transformer explosion, but later revealed they were caused by two pipe bombs hidden behind an electrical control panel.
Bangkok Metropolitan Police commissioner Pol Lt Gen Sanit Mahathavorn said yesterday the subway device might have been left several weeks ago and was probably not meant to cause harm.
He said the probe so far had found no connection between this bomb and the recent Sanam Luang blasts, or the last one at the hospital on the third anniversary of the coup, which injured 25 people including retired officers.
National Council for Peace and Order spokesman Piyapong Klinpan said an investigation is under way to determine if the four incidents are related and assured that security and information gathering operations are being intensified.