BANGKOK (AP) – Thai police said Wednesday that the fingerprints of a foreign man arrested at Thailand’s border with Cambodia match those found on a bottle containing bomb-making material, as the investigation into last month’s deadly bombing in Bangkok gathered steam.
National police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said authorities were still conducting DNA tests but could determine that “this man is important and is related or conspired with people who committed” the Aug. 17 bombing at the Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok. The blast left 20 people dead, more than half of them foreigners, and over 120 injured.
The investigation into the attack has picked up in recent days with the arrest of two suspects and raids on two apartments on the outskirts of Bangkok that contained bomb-making materials.
In the first apartment, raided Saturday in the Bangkok neighborhood of Nong Chok, police arrested a suspect they described as a foreign man and seized bomb-making equipment that included detonators, ball bearings and a metal pipe believed to be a bomb casing.
They also took fingerprints from the apartment, which turned out to match those of another suspect arrested Tuesday at the border with Cambodia, Prawut said.