Man in yellow shirt is Bangkok bomber – Thai police

MANILA, Philippines - Thai police said yesterday investigators believe a man seen in security video wearing a yellow T-shirt and carrying a backpack set off the explosion at a central Bangkok shrine that killed 20 people and injured more than 100.

“The yellow shirt guy is not just the suspect. He is the bomber,” Police Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press.

Prawut earlier released several photos of the man, with and without the backpack, on social media. The images were apparently taken from closed-circuit video at Erawan shrine on Monday before the central Bangkok bombing. He confirmed that the man is suspected in the bombing when contacted by The Associated Press.

Video footage posted separately on Thai media appeared to show the same man sitting on a bench at the crowded shrine, then taking off the backpack and leaving it behind as he walked away.

Thai authorities identified five victims as Thai and four as Chinese — two of them from Hong Kong — along with two Malaysians and one Singaporean, and said the nationalities of the other eight victims remain unknown.

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) spokesman Charles Jose said yesterday afternoon that the embassy in Bangkok had confirmed that a Filipina was among the injured victims in the Bangkok explosion.

“She sustained injury to her hearing due to the blast,” Jose said.

Jose said the Filipina requested that her identity and other personal details not be revealed.

“She is in Bangkok together with (a) foreign family, she will return to the country soon,” Jose said.

Thailand’s junta chief Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday branded the bombing the “worst ever attack” on Thailand, as he gave the first indications of who authorities believed were responsible.

“Today there is a suspect... we are looking for this guy,” Prayut told

reporters, adding the man was seen on closed circuit television at the blast site.

Prayut said the male suspect was believed to be from an “anti-government group based in Thailand’s northeast” — the heartland of the kingdom’s Red Shirt movement that opposes the military junta.

Bangkok has endured more than a decade of deadly political violence, with the junta ruling the nation since May last year after toppling the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra.

The Red Shirts are a grassroots network of rural and urban poor that are loyal to Yingluck and her self-exiled brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist politician who was a previous prime minister.

But no one claimed responsibility for the assault and security analysts expressed skepticism over the government’s lightning move to cast suspicion on its opponents.

“Even if they (Red Shirts) are hell-bent on bringing down the government I just can’t see them targeting a Hindu or any other religious shrine,” Zachary Abuza, an independent expert on Thai security, told AFP.

Muslim rebels from the country’s far south have also waged a separatist insurgency for more than a decade that has claimed thousands of lives, mostly civilians.

But they have never been known to carry out substantial attacks in Bangkok, and Abuza as well as other analysts said Monday’s bombing did not follow the insurgents’ typical modus operandi.

Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs in Thailand, said groups with links to military factions also had to be considered as potential suspects.

The prime minister called Monday’s explosion at a busy intersection “the worst incident that has ever happened in Thailand,” and he promised to track down those responsible.

“There have been minor bombs or just noise, but this time they aimed for innocent lives,” Prayuth said. “They want to destroy our economy, our tourism.”

Without elaborating about possible perpetrators, the prime minister said yesterday, “Today we have seen the closed-circuit footage, we saw some suspects, but it wasn’t clear. We have to find them first.”

The improvised explosive device scattered body parts, spattered blood, blasted windows and burned motorbikes to the metal. The explosion went off around 7 p.m. in an upscale area filled with tourists, office workers and shoppers. No one has claimed responsibility.

Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said authorities had no idea an attack had been planned.

“We didn’t know about this ahead of time. We had no intelligence on this attack,” the defense minister said.- Rainier Allan Ronda, Delon Porcalla, Mayen Jaymalin, Cecille Suerte Felipe, AP