Bangkok Bombing: Police Hunt For Suspect

Police officials told reporters Thursday that authorities believed those behind the blast must have been planned it in advance, maybe a month ahead of time, and likely included a site inspection team, bomb makers, bombers and an escape team.

“It’s unlikely that it’s the work of an global terrorist group”, Colonel Winthai Suvaree, a junta spokesman, said in a televised update, adding “Chinese people were not the direct target”.

BPP law student Vivian Chan, 19, was killed in Monday’s blast near the Erawan shrine, a popular tourist attraction in the Thai capital.

Thai police last evening released a sketch of a young bespectacled “foreign man” who carried out the bombing and is believed to be part of a 10-member network.

Police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri also said investigators were now convinced two other men seen on the grainy footage were his accomplices.

“If citizens or anyone can give us information or clues that lead to the arrest of this man, I have set a reward of 1 million baht”, National Police Chief Somyot Poompanmoung said.

The sketch was based on footage that showed a man dressed in a yellow T-shirt dumping a backpack inside the shrine compound and walking away through a crowd of tourists about 20 minutes before the explosion.

The two men, however, insist they are tour guides, the BBC has reported.

Of the 22 dead, at least 11 were foreigners with visitors from Britain, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia among them.

Authorities have offered a one million baht reward for information leading to the arrest of the prime suspect.

A Thai taxi driver who believes he picked up the main suspect told CNN the man did not appear to be Thai, and did not speak at all, instead handing the driver a piece of paper with the name of a central city park in English.

The apparent deliberate targeting of tourists and the scale of the explosion had never been seen in the Thai capital and, with no-one claiming responsibility, experts are perplexed over who to blame.

“They may be doing it for a political motive or to undermine the economy or tourism or for other reasons”, he said, according to the Bangkok Post.

“The bombing suspect could probably be killed if he does not surrender”.

CNN security and intelligence analyst Bob Baer said it was unusual for a pipe bomb to kill so many people and cause so much damage.

Blame now seemed to be shifting to either Muslim separatists waging an insurgency in the south of the country, or domestic political activists.