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| Bangkok : It is much clearer who the bombers are |
“It is much clearer who the bombers are, but I can’t reveal right now,” Prawit Wongsuwan said on Tuesday. “We have suspects. There are not many people.”
The government has blamed the attack, which ripped through a bustling part of the city at 7pm on Monday night, on forces seeking to destroy its tourist economy.
Much of the violence in the southeast Asian nation stems from a low-level insurgency waged by Muslim separatists in the south, but the country’s army chief said on Tuesday that the attack does not bear the hallmarks of the rebels.
“This does not match with incidents in southern Thailand. The type of bomb used is also not in keeping with the south,” Royal Thai Army chief and deputy defence minister General Udomdej Sitabutr said in a televised interview.
No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Hindu Erawan shrine, a major attraction for visitors from Asia and for Thai people. Dedicated to the Hindu god Brahma, it is also popular among Thailand’s Buddhist and Chinese tourists.
Eight foreigners were killed in the explosion, including three Chinese, two Hong Kong residents, two people from Malaysia and one person from the Philippines. Scores of people were wounded, including many from China and Taiwan.
Forensic police teams in white gloves and sniffer dogs scoured the major intersection in the heart of the capital early on Tuesday morning, where glass and blood still lay on the road.
More than 6,500 people have been killed in the long-running insurgency in the south of the country since 2004, but militants have not launched an attack of this scale on the capital.
Bangkok has witnessed violent protests from opposing political groups since 2006 but foreigners are rarely caught in the bloodshed. An indiscriminate bomb attack killing large numbers of people is unheard of in recent memory.
Thai national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said the death toll stood at 22 from the bombing, with 123 people wounded.
National police chief Somyot Poompanmuang told reporters the attack was unprecedented in Thailand. He said the blast was caused by a pipe bomb.
“The perpetrators intended to destroy the economy and tourism, because the incident occurred in the heart of the tourism district,” defence minister Prawit told Reuters late on Monday.
Tourism is one of the few bright spots in an economy that continues to underperform more than a year after the military seized power in May 2014.
It accounts for about 10% of the economy, and the government had expected a record number of visitors this year following a sharp fall in 2014 during months of street protests and the coup.
At the scene on Monday evening lay burnt out motorcycles, with rubble from the shrine’s wall and pools of blood on the street. “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-metre-wide crater.
“Some were shredded. There were legs where heads were supposed to be. It was horrific,” Cunningham told Reuters, adding that people several hundred metres away had been wounded.
The Nation television channel reported that the government would set up a “war room” to coordinate a response. Two pipe bombs exploded in the same district in February but did not cause significant damage.
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