Government suggests as many as 10 people were involved in atrocity as it calls in Interpol and Australian police to aid investigation

Thailand has said international terror groups were unlikely to be behind the Bangkok shrine bombing as it appealed for Interpol’s help in finding the man accused of being the prime suspect.



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The widening of the inquiry on Thursday – also appealing to passengers of international airlines to come forward with evidence – came as national police chief Somyot Poompanmoung said the bombing may have involved a network of people, suggesting as many as 10 people could have played a part.

Three days after the attack police have not announced the arrests of any suspects and authorities have released confusing and contradictory information about their investigation.

A warrant issued for the main suspect on Wednesday described him as an “unnamed foreigner”, but police have not said how they reached that conclusion.

A spokesman for the ruling junta insisted on Thursday, however, that the bomb attack was unlikely to be the work of an international terrorist group, saying it was not specifically targeted at Chinese tourists.

“Security agencies have cooperated with agencies from allied countries and have come to the preliminary conclusion that the incident is unlikely to be linked to international terrorism,” said Col Winthai Suvaree, a spokesman for the junta, known as the National Council for Peace and Order.

Thai authorities had at first been reluctant to seek help in the investigation into the blast, which hit a busy shrine on Monday evening, killing 20 people and wounding dozens of others. “We will seek help from Interpol today,” Maj Gen Apichart Suriboonya, the head of Thailand’s Interpol unit, said.



Staff on a British Airways flight from Singapore to Sydney on Thursday appealed to passengers who had visited the Erawan shrine, a major tourist attraction in the heart of the Thai capital, to come forward. They said those who took photos at the site in the days before the attack should contact Australian federal police.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bangkok shrine bombing suspects seen in CCTV video footage. Link to video

The main evidence so far in the case appears to be grainy CCTV footage of a man in a yellow T-shirt dropping a black backpack at the shrine minutes before the detonation.

Authorities on Wednesday released an electronic sketch of a thin man with dark, shaggy hair and a light complexion, wearing black-rimmed glasses but later said he may have been wearing a disguise. Two other men seen in the security camera footage are also being treated as suspects by police.

Police chief Somyot said on Thursday that “there must have been at least 10 people involved”.

He told reporters: “It is a big network. There was preparation using many people. This includes those who looked out on the streets, prepared the bomb and those at the site and … those who knew the escape route.”

Bangkok bombing: two more men in CCTV footage being treated as suspects Read more

Observers have criticised the way the blast scene was contaminated in the hours after the attack, as journalists and passersby walked into the area where glass and chunks of human flesh still lay on the road. Less than 24 hours after the attack, authorities had cleaned the area and paved over the small bomb crater.



The prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general, said on Wednesday that Thailand was not seeking outside help. “This incident happened in Thailand. It is Thailand. Why do we want other people to come in and investigate?”

As the attack has no precedent in the country, police and observers have struggled to suggest a motive. On Tuesday, Thailand’s army chief said the attack did not bear the hallmarks of Muslim separatists in the south who have been waging an insurgency for years. Violence has been used by Thai political groups, but a large-scale bombing is unheard of.

Somyot suggested authorities were also looking at ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from China’s western Xinjiang region, many of whom have fled to south-east Asia.

Thailand forcibly returned 109 Uighurs to China in July, angering the community and causing an outcry from human rights groups and the UN, which said they could face persecution and abuse.

“Police are not ruling out anything including [Thai] politics and the conflict of ethnic Uighurs who, before this, Thailand sent back to China,” Somyot said.