|
 Authorities said they were keeping watch for the suspect at the
country's borders, but police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang told a news
conference it was not clear how many people were involved in the
attack or if they were still in Thailand.
"I don't suspect one person, I suspect many people," he said. "I am
confident there are Thais involved, but I am not saying it is just
Thais or that there are foreigners."
On Tuesday, a day after the bombing at the Erawan shrine in the
heart of Bangkok, grainy closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage
was released showing a young man dumping a backpack at the scene and
walking away.
The government says the attack was aimed at wrecking the economy,
which depends heavily on tourism.
No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, which according to
the latest official toll killed 20 people - more than half of them
foreigners from several Asian countries - and wounded more than 120.
Deputy police chief Jaktip Chaijinda said earlier that investigators
believed the man on the video resembled a foreigner more than a
Thai. A sketch of the suspect released on Wednesday showed a
fair-skinned man with thick, medium-length black hair, a wispy beard
and black glasses.
 At least two foreigners have been interviewed in connection with the
blast, police said.
Jangling nerves in the city on Tuesday, a small explosive was thrown
from a bridge toward a river pier, sending a plume of water into the
air, but no one was hurt. A government spokesman initially said
there were "patterns" linking the two bombs which both used TNT, but
police chief Somyot said no direct connection between them had been
established.
Police Major General Pornchai Suteerakune, commander of the
Institute of Forensic Medicine, said the bodies of almost all those
killed at the shrine had wounds inflicted by ball bearings that were
packed into the bomb.
The shrine, a blood-spattered scene of charred motorbikes and debris
after the blast, was reopened on Wednesday.
NO CLEAR TELL-TALE SIGNS
The CCTV footage of the youth with a yellow T-shirt shows him
entering the shrine compound with a backpack on, sitting down
against a railing and slipping out of the bag's straps.
He then stands up and walks out apparently holding a mobile phone,
leaving the bag by the fence as tourists mill about.
"From looking at the CCTV footage we think that the yellow shirt man
was maybe operating with one or two other people at the scene,"
police spokesman Prawut Thavomsiri said, without elaborating.
Prawut earlier tweeted that police were offering a 1 million baht
($28,100) reward for information leading to the arrest of the
suspect.
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Police have not ruled out any group for the attack, including
elements opposed to the military government, though they say it did
not match the tactics of Muslim insurgents in the south or so-called
'red shirt' supporters of the previous administration. "The attack
did not bear the hallmarks of either southern Muslim separatists or
red-shirt militants," said Angel Rabasa, an expert on Islamist
militancy at the RAND Corporation.
He said the attack could be the work of Islamic State, which has
been expanding its reach in Southeast Asia, or an al Qaeda related
or independent jihadist group. However, such groups usually claim
responsibility for their attacks.
Police said they were also considering the possibility that ethnic
Uighurs were behind the bombing. Thailand forcibly returned 109
Uighurs to China last month.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of members of the Turkic-speaking and
largely Muslim minority have fled unrest in China's western Xinjiang
region, where hundreds of people have been killed, prompting a
crackdown by Chinese authorities. Many Uighurs have traveled through
Southeast Asia to Turkey.
However, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha sought to cool speculation
of a revenge attack by Uighurs. "I have always said that what the
government did was within the boundaries of the law and by
international agreement," he told reporters. "If we did not send
them they would have been a burden to Thailand. I don't want this
issue raised."
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.
A parliament hand-picked by a junta that seized power in a 2014 coup
is due to vote on a draft constitution next month. Critics say the
draft is undemocratic and intended to help the army secure power and
curb the influence of elected politicians.
(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, with additional reporting by
Pracha Hariraksapitak, Pairat Temphairojana and John Chalmers;
Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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