27 killed in blast outside Hindu temple in Thailand

The Immigration Department said it will rush three officers to Thailand Tuesday morning to render assistance to those injured and other Hong Kong residents there. It advises New Zealanders in Bangkok to keep away from the downtown area, to be highly vigilant and take heed of instructions from local authorities on how to stay safe.

The Erawan Shrine in Central Bangkok.

The Erawan Shrine is a major tourist attraction and foreigners are among the casualties.

To the Hindu lord Brahma the Erawan is a popular shrine and is visited by thousands of Buddhist devotees every day.

The police chief said the device appeared to have been a pipe bomb hidden in or around a motorcycle, although this has not been confirmed and there were also no claims by any groups of responsibility for the act.

Earlier reports placed the death toll as high as 27 people, and the wounded at 78.

A deadly blast at a popular religious shrine in Bangkok rocked the Thai capital Monday, leaving scores dead and injured.

“The perpetrators intended to destroy the economy and tourism because the incident occurred in the heart of the district”, said Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan.

The diplomatic correspondent of The Daily Star adds: No Bangladeshi expatriates or tourists were reported to have been killed or injured in the blast, according to the Bangladesh embassy in Bangkok. Although there are small numbers of Muslim rebels in the country, fighting against Thai forces, they don’t typically carry out such attacks outside their ethnic Malay region.

A wounded Chinese national lies on a gurney at the Police General Hospital after an explosion in Bangkok, August 17, 2015.

“We will hunt them down,” the BBC quoted the minister as saying.

Initial suspicion has fallen on Muslim separatists but Thailand has been riven for a decade by a struggle for power between political factions in Bangkok, a city under martial law.

Thailand’s capital has been relatively peaceful since a military coup ousted a civilian government in May last year after several months of sometimes violent political protests against the previous government.