Bangkok bomb: at least 12 reportedly killed outside Erawan shrine

A bomb has exploded outside a Hindu shrine in central Bangkok, killing at least 12 people and wounding many more, according to a police officer and rescue worker at the scene.
Body parts and mangled scooters were scattered across the street
after the explosion outside the Erawan shrine in the central Chidlom district of the Thai capital.
Dozens of ambulances are at the scene and a nearby metro station has been closed. There are unconfirmed reports in Thai media that the death toll has reached at least 27, including four foreigners.
A spokesman for Thailand’s ruling junta said a second bomb at the scene had been found and made safe.
A police chief told Reuters: “All I can say now is there has been an explosion in central Bangkok involving a motorcycle bomb.” He said there had been fatalities, but could not confirm details.
Police and a rescue worker told Reuters that 12 people had been killed in the blast, which happened at about 7pm local time (12.00 GMT). Local media put the number of injured at 20.

Bangkok blast

Thanapon Peng, 25, passed the site on a motorbike taxi moments after the blast.
“I saw glass. I saw some organs of people on the road. I don’t know how many people there were,” he told the Guardian in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel, where tourists and Thais have been waiting until they get the all clear to leave.
“I heard that about 80 people are wounded but we don’t know how many died.”

 

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Motorcycles lie on the street at the scene of the explosion near the Erawan shrine in central Bangkok. Photograph: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA

Police with torches have been looking under bushes and walking the grounds of the nearby police station in an apparent effort to search for other bombs.
A long line of ambulances has formed outside a hospital located close to the blast site, so many of the injured are being taken to medical centres further away.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Thai forces are fighting a low-level Muslim insurgency in the south of the predominantly Buddhist country, although those rebels have rarely launched attacks outside their ethnic Malay heartland.

Bangkok rescuers attempt to reach survivors of shrine bombing.

The country has also been riven for a decade by intense and sometimes violent rivalry between political factions in Bangkok and elsewhere.
The army has ruled Thailand since May 2014, when it ousted an elected government after months of, at times, violent anti-government protests.
The Erawan shrine, on a busy corner near top hotels, shopping centres and offices, is a major tourist attraction, especially for visitors from east Asia. Many Thai people worship there.
The shrine intersection was the site of months of anti-government protests in 2010 by supporters of the ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Dozens were killed in a military crackdown and a shopping centre was set ablaze.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report