Another? Thai police deactivate bomb, cause unknown

Thailand’s police chief said Monday the investigation into last week’s bomb blast has been hampered by broken security cameras in central Bangkok along the main suspect’s getaway route. He is being charged with possessing an illegal weapon, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

Police have also received one million baht from an anonymous person who wanted to top up the police reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspects.

“In terms of the CCTV cameras, some don’t capture images properly and some were damaged which is a waste of time for police piecing together where the suspect went”, national police chief Somyot Poompanmuang told reporters.

“We can not give details of that progress… let the police work”, police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said.

Thai police found and defused a bomb on Monday a week after an explosion killed 20 people in the country’s worst-ever bomb attack but it was not clear if the device found at a Bangkok construction site had anything to do with the earlier blast.

While Thailand’s top cop blamed outdated equipment for the seemingly stalled-out hunt for the attacker behind the Erawan Shrine bombing, a police spokesman yesterday said the bomber had likely carefully timed the attacks so that he wouldn’t have lingered in the country.

“I suspect that he may have left, but we will keep searching, in case we can find others who may be in the country or find clues, evidence, and witnesses who may have seen him, ” he told Channel 3 TV network. He said that a police sketch of the suspect had been distributed to border posts.

Authorities have arrested two people accused of spreading “false information, ” apparently in connection with the shrine bombing.

At about 1 p.m. Tuesday, an explosion took place in the water canal near a busy pier without hurting anyone. On a police arrest warrant, the suspect is described as a “foreign man, ” although a military spokesman said a connection to worldwide terrorism seemed unlikely.