Deadly bomb explodes in Bangkok

TThai authorities arrested a man they believe is part of a group responsible for a bombing at a shrine in central Bangkok two weeks ago, the prime minister announced Tuesday. He said the suspect resembles a yellow-shirted man in a surveillance video who police say planted the bomb.

"It would be great if he were (the bomber). Then we will know who they are, where they came from, who's behind this," Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.

He said the man is a foreigner and was detained in eastern Thailand near the Cambodian border, one of several border crossings where authorities set up checkpoints after the Aug. 17 bombing which killed 20 people, many of them foreign tourists, and injured more than 120.

The blast at the Erawan Shrine was unprecedented in the Thai capital, where smaller bombs have been employed in domestic political violence over the past decade, but not in an effort to cause large-scale casualties.

Security officials on Saturday arrested a man during a raid on a Bangkok apartment that contained some bomb-making materials, and Thai military authorities have been interrogating him. He has been linked to the shrine bombing, but the authorities have not yet released his name or nationality.

Arrest warrants were issued Monday for two more suspects, a Thai woman and a man of unknown nationality, after a raid Sunday on a second apartment found more bomb-making materials. Relatives of the woman who had rented the second apartment told authorities that she is innocent and is now in Turkey, married to a Turkish man.

No one has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, sparking an array of theories about who might be behind it. Police have suggested that the suspects were part of a people-smuggling group who held a grudge against Thai authorities. (AP)

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