Teens held over bomb blasts
ASEAN+
Sunday, 04 Aug 2019
image: https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2019/08/04/192109.jpg
Suspicious activity: A screencap from the footage of the man wearing a student’s uniform and a fedora at Siam Square Mall. — AFP
BANGKOK: Thai police have arrested three teenagers as suspects following a series of bomb blasts that rocked Bangkok.
The arrests matched a description police gave to The Straits Times that local residents saw several technical school students dropping off objects before some of the explosions took place on Friday.
The six explosions were believed to be caused by home-made bombs triggered by timers, investigators have said.
One of the blasts took place on Rama 9 Road in Suan Luang district and injured three street cleaners.
Two other small blasts went off near the BTS Skytrain Chong Nonsi station in central Bangkok, and three at a government complex on Chaengwattana Road in the outskirts of Bangkok.
A seventh unexploded device was later recovered by the authorities.The security scare added to the two fake bombs found by police on Thursday near the Centara Grand and Bangkok Convention Centre, where the 52nd Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and related gatherings were being held.
Two men have been arrested in connection with the fake bomb incident.
The regional meetings, which were attended by senior global leaders, ended on Friday.
Meanwhile, a fire, suspected to be an arson, broke out in the commercial district Siam Square on Friday. A manhunt has been launched for a man acting suspiciously according to a store’s surveillance footage.
Footage showed an explosion at the mall – which is minutes from the summit venue – in the early hours of Friday morning, after it was apparently planted by a man dressed in a student’s uniform about 12 hours earlier.
The man, wearing a fedora and face mask, is seen entering a store in the mall at around 3.30pm on Thursday, according to time stamps on the footage.
Milling around the store, he stops at a shelf full of cuddly toy seals and polar bears and fiddles with one of them for a few seconds before placing it back on the shelf.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered a probe into the bomb attacks and the other incidents, which could be personally embarrassing to him as he played host for the high-profile meeting after being controversially elected prime minister in June by parliament, following the March general election.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, and it was not immediately known if all of the attacks were linked.
Prayut said at a news conference on Friday that an “old group” could be the possible culprits behind the explosions.
He was referring to his political rivals the Red Shirt group, comprising supporters of former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra.
“But I am not ruling out other possibilities, ” Prayut added.
“Whoever did this, they want to destroy the country. They shouldn’t have a place in this country.”
But police chief Chakthip Chaijinda indicated on Friday that initial investigations pointed to a group of southern Muslim insurgents as the perpetrators.
Still, police also did not rule out that the explosions may be backed by political and other groups. — Agencies
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