Jimmy Barnes knew blast was a bomb

Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes has narrowly escaped being caught in a deadly bomb blast in Thailand.

The family were going to meet friends at the Chinese restaurant in the Intercontinental for dinner, when a last minute decision by Barnes to bypass the uneven roads and walk in an enclosed walkway between the hotel and a shopping centre saved his family’s life. “We had two ways of doing it. I had the pram with the grandson with me and walking out the front and turning right and walking past the shrine would have been very hard because it’s a bumpy road and trying to get across and all that kind of stuff”, Barnes told AAP from his Bangkok hotel.

The group took shelter back at the hotel. “Bombs diffused. Bodies still covered on road, terrible, so sad”.

So far there’ve been no reports of Australians injured or killed, but the Department of Foreign Affairs is consulting with Thai officials.

The deadly attack has been blamed on rogue Thai forces seeking to destroy its tourist economy, with authorities reporting that the improvised explosive devise was clearly targeting foreigners in one of the city’s most popular hotel districts.

It was a night we were all looking forward to – dinner in a nice hotel with a group of old friends from Australia who were visiting Bangkok.

When they met they had discussed which route to take to the hotel – one of their options took them passed the shrine where the blast happened. The decision to cross the street via the overhead bridge may have saved their lives.

“The glass lining [of] the closed-in walkway shook and nearly buckled from the shockwave of the blast”. They said they’d seen a mangled body under a sheet at the blast site and there were reports of another bomb at the intersection that was being defused by a bomb disposal unit. Mr Parkhouse described “chaotic” scenes inside the hotel foyer.

“I knew it was a bomb straight away”. Jimmy joked about the headlines in tomorrow’s papers: Rock star makes nappy run during bombing.

He said Barnes was talking about the forthcoming Australian tour of his band Cold Chisel on the walkway when the bomb went off. People screaming. “We got struck by shrapnel and debris”.

Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes near the scene of a bomb blast in the Thai capital Bangkok.