Thai police hunt ten suspects over Bangkok bomb

Thailand’s military junta spokesman Col. Winthai Suvaree says that this week’s deadly bombing in Bangkok was “unlikely to be linked to global terrorism”.

Police now say they have identified two more possible suspects in the bombing outside the Erawan shrine on Monday.

Thai security forces are sharing information with Interpol, the global police organization, and with intelligence agencies from allied countries, officials said.

A motorbike taxi driver who gave his name as Kasem said he picked up a man matching the main suspect’s description near the shrine after the bomb exploded in an interview broadcast by Thai Channel 3, the Bangkok Post reported.

Around 20 people were killed and over 120 people injured in the blast, including 11 foreigners from Indonesia, Britain, Malaysia, China, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The men were seen on security footage alongside the suspected bomber near the Erawan Shrine moments before the blast.

On Wednesday, Somyot said the second attack might also be a “copycat” although police were keeping all options open.

Police spokesperson Prawut Thavornsiri told reporters that he was “unsure” where the main suspect seen in CCTV footage was, and that the man may no longer be in Thailand. “I think that he speaks… a foreign language, not English also”. Police have not said how they reached that conclusion.

They have offered a 30,000 baht (£538) reward for the driver, who is believed to have dropped one of the suspects off at a luxury hotel near the bomb site that evening.

The Bangkok bombing has captivated people across the country, but attacks in southern Thailand have killed more than 6,500 since January 2004, according to Thitinan Pongsudhiral, chairman of the Center for Strategy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Prawut made his latest comments during a walkabout in Soi Cowboy, one of the city’s famous red light districts, as part of a police push to reassure tourists after the deadly blasts which have left the city reeling.

“We basically sent in the modus operandi (of the suspect) and also the appearance of the suspect we’re looking for”, Pol Lt Col Kissana added.

Buddhist monks led prayers at the shrine as it reopened this morning while devotees laid bundles of clothes to represent the lost loved ones.

The blast comes at a sensitive time for Thailand, which has been riven for a decade by a sometimes-violent struggle for power between political factions in Bangkok. In 2010, more than 90 people were killed in two months of violence that was centered on the same intersection where Monday’s bomb went off. But none of those attacks included a bomb that seemed meant to produce mass casualties.