Foreigners may have been involved in Thailand bombing — police

Thai police said Wednesday that foreigners may have been involved in a deadly explosion at Bangkok shrine on Monday evening, as a hunt intensified for the bomber who set off a device at the crowded site, killing 20 people.

National chief of police Somyot Poompanmoung said that a suspected bomber seen in security footage had not acted alone and that a second explosion at a Bangkok pier on Tuesday that caused no injuries may be linked.

“I can tell you now that there are not only foreigners involved in the incidents but some Thais must have taken part,” the police chief said, blaming the attacks on “a network,” according to the Bangkok Post.

Investigators believe a man seen in security video wearing a yellow T-shirt and carrying a backpack set off the explosion. Police released several photos of the man, with and without the backpack, and asked the public to provide information about him.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Meanwhile, Thai monks led prayers Wednesday for the reopening of the Erawan shrine in the Thai capital’s commercial heart.

The unprecedented attack on the Thai capital left at least 11 foreigners dead, with Chinese, Hong Kong, Singaporean, Indonesian and a family from Malaysia among the victims.

More than 100 other people were wounded by a blast that shredded bodies and incinerated motorcycles at one of the city’s busiest intersections.

Around a dozen Buddhist monks led prayers at the Erawan shrine as it re-opened early Wednesday while devotees — including tourists — genuflected and held joss sticks, and AFP reporter said.

Residents of Bangkok posted messages of unity and condolences alongside flowers and incense sticks. Messages posted on a board at the shrine included one in English: “Be strong. Be together.”

A relative of the dead Malaysians had laid bundles of clothes at the shrine to represent the lost loved ones, according to a monk.

The shrine — a popular tourist attraction that typifies the kingdom’s unusual blend of Hindu and Buddhist traditions — and its surrounding had already been largely restored.

Twisted iron railings were the only immediate sign of the carnage, which police believe was caused by a bomb made up of three kilograms of explosives and ball bearings.

One devotee had more reason than most to give thanks.

Tommy Goh, 56, a Thai-Malaysian from Penang, said only a delayed taxi from his hotel spared him from being at the shrine around the time of the blast.

“Every year I come down to this shrine, we were meant to be here around 6:50-7 p.m. but the taxi didn’t arrive from the hotel… so we went somewhere else,” he told AFP. “Ten minutes later and it could have been so different.”

Police released images Tuesday showing a man, apparently young, slightly built and wearing a yellow T-shirt and dark shorts, walking into the shrine with a backpack.

In the video he calmly places the backpack underneath a bench and then walks away clutching a blue plastic bag and what looks like a smartphone.

The bomb exploded several minutes later, leading Thailand police to make the man their prime suspect.

A small explosion on Tuesday by a bridge at the city’s Chaopraya river has been tied to Monday’s bomb.

Colonel Kamthorn Ouicharoen of the Thai bomb squad police confirmed the bridge bomb was the same type as the one detonated at the Erawan Shrine.

“It’s exactly the same, the equipment used to make it, the bomb size,” he said.

“Police will resume collecting evidence this afternoon,” he added.

Thailand has experienced a near-decade-long political crisis that has seen endless rounds of street violence.

But never anything on the scale of Monday’s bomb.

A festering insurgency by Muslim rebels in the Thai south has claimed 6,400 victims, but is a highly localized conflict.