Bangkok bombing: Thai police arrest suspect

Police say arrested man fits description of main suspect in 17 August bomb attack on shrine in Chidlom district of Thai capital that killed 20 people

Thai police have arrested a suspect in connection with the bomb attack on a Hindu temple in central Bangkok that killed 20 people, including a British national.
A police spokesman told Reuters that the arrested man fitted the description of the main suspect in the attack on the Erawan shrine in the central Chidlom district of the Thai capital.
Police arrested the suspect on Saturday in Nong Jok, on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.

Officers raided an apartment the man used and discovered possible bomb-making materials, police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said.
The suspect “looks like the one we are looking for”, he said. “They also found a lot of materials which can be used to make bombs.”

Prawut said that the person who had been arrested was a foreigner, but refused to say if he was Turkish, as had been reported by some Thai media.

The main evidence in the case has been grainy CCTV footage of a man in a yellow T-shirt dropping a black backpack near the shrine minutes before an explosion ripped through it on 17 August.

Days later police released a detailed electronic sketch of the suspect, showing a thin man with dark, shaggy hair and a light complexion, wearing black-rimmed glasses and wristbands on both arms.

The image has been widely circulated in Thailand, including on roadside billboards, along with offers of a reward for information leading to an arrest. The total reward on offer from both police and private citizens last week stood at more than £200,000.

Police are yet to determine a clear motive for the bombing at the Erawan shrine - an attraction popular with Chinese tourists as well as Thais, which also left more than 120 people injured.