The latest on Monday night’s bombing at a shrine next to a busy central Bangkok intersection:
Evon Lo, a representative of New Way Travel, a Bangkok-based agency that caters to Hong Kong tourists, said Tuesday that the “cancellation rate of our Hong Kong clients today is 100 percent” in the wake of the bombing, which killed 20 people and injured over 100.
The no-shows came as Hong Kong government raised its travel alert for Bangkok to “red,” advising its travelers to avoid non-essential trips to Thailand. Two Hong Kong residents died in the attack on the shrine, a popular tourist site.
But Wu Weilong, an operator at Soon Un Tour, Bangkok-based agency that deals with clients from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China said that he had received no cancellations.
He said that tourists currently in Thailand were “all calm and there have been no complaints.”
– Penny YiWang in Bangkok
A Thai police spokesman says a man seen in security video wearing a yellow T-shirt and carrying a backpack is believed to have set off the explosion at the Bangkok shrine.
“The yellow shirt guy is not just the suspect. He is the bomber,” Police Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri told The Associated Press.
Prawut earlier said the man “is a suspect” and had released several photos of him, with and without the backpack, on a social media platform. The images were apparently taken from closed-circuit video at the Erawan Shrine before the bombing occurred around 7 p.m. Monday near a busy Bangkok intersection.
Video footage posted separately on Thai media appeared to show the same man sitting on a bench at the crowded shrine, then taking off the backpack and leaving it behind as he walked away.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told the nation in his first televised address since the blast that the government will expedite “all investigative efforts to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” but said nothing specific about suspects or the status of the investigation.
He urged the nation to be united and called on the media, traditional and social, to provide constructive news rather than coverage or commentary that would be contentious or have a misleading effect on the investigation.
He promised foreigners living in Thailand that the government would do its best to safeguard their security, property and interests.
Prayuth also asked that citizens remain vigilant to any irregular activities.
A day after Bangkok’s deadly bomb attack there has been a second explosion in the capital, this time at a ferry pier, but no one was hurt, police say.
Police Senior Sgt. Maj. Worapong Boonthawee says an explosive device was thrown from the Taksin Bridge on Tuesday afternoon and blew up at Sathorn Pier after falling into the Chao Phraya River below. “There is no injury,” he says.
ref:usnews
