A BYRON Bay actor living in Thailand has told of how he was mistaken as the suspect behind the bombing of the Hindu Shrine in Bangkok.
Advertisement
However, Thai police believe the bomber was caught on CCTV and have released images of a man wearing a yellow t-shirt and carrying a backpack.
Moments later, he takes the backpack off and walks out holding only a blue plastic bag and what appears to be a mobile phone.
“The yellow shirt guy is not just the suspect – he is the bomber”, police spokesman Lt Gen Prawut Thavornsiri said. Police were trying to track down the taxi driver.
Amid the ongoing manhunt for the suspect who left his backpack, police said they were not ruling out any possibility including deported dozens of Uighurs to China sparking widespread criticism. “Most were meant to intimidate, to cause panic, not to kill”, Veera Prateepchaikul, former editor of the Bangkok Post, wrote in a commentary.
Bangkok has seen politically charged violence in the past decade.
The bomb exploded several minutes later, leading Thailand police to make the man their prime suspect.
But last month he FCO warned against all but essential travel to Tunisia amid fears of a fresh terror attack nearly two weeks after the atrocity in Sousse, in which 30 British nationals were among the 38 killed by crazed gunman Seifeddine Rezgui.
He said security at transport hubs and tourist sites was being beefed up.
Zachary Abuza, an independent expert on Thai security, said he doubted it was in the interests of the anti-junta groups to carry out such an attack. A Filipina tourist and her companions related that they passed by the shrine just before the explosion and returned to see the destruction. The reshuffle, which comes into effect in September, has traditionally been a source of unrest, as different cliques in the army, usually defined by their graduating class in the military academy, seek the most important posts to consolidate their power.
Thai forces are also fighting a low-level Muslim insurgency in the predominantly Buddhist country’s south, but the separatists have rarely launched attacks outside their heartland. He said there were “still anti-government groups out there”, although he did not elaborate. At least 22 people died and 120 others were injured.
But they have not made Thailand a prime target. The government said the attack, that targeted a commercial center full of tourists, was meant as a blow to the country’s economy.
A total of 123 people were injured, 42 of them were Thais, followed by 28 Chinese. China said six of its nationals, including two from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, had been confirmed among the dead.
Advertisement
“There were bodies everywhere”, said Marko Cunningham, a New Zealand paramedic working with a Bangkok ambulance service, who said the blast had left a two-meter-wide (6-foot) crater.
