Thai police: No bomb match to suspects’ DNA

Police said forensic tests on two suspects have failed to find a link to the site of Thailand’s deadliest bomb attack.

DNA examination of the two foreigners tie them to a stash of explosives found in a Bangkok apartment block, but not to evidence collected at the Hindu Erawan Shrine where 20 people were killed on August 17, police said.

The lack of a connection complicates a high-profile case shrouded in mystery, with authorities no closer to establishing a motive for the attack carried out in one of Bangkok’s busiest commercial areas.

The military has speculated the perpetrators could have been members of a human trafficking gang frustrated by a police crackdown. Thailand has rejected the possibility a militant group was involved.

Police were testing DNA samples of the second of two foreigners, to establish if he was the chief suspect — a yellow-shirted man caught on surveillance camera placing a rucksack at the shrine before the explosion.

“There’s no evidence to confirm he is the yellow-shirt man,” police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri told reporters. He said police believed he was “definitely involved in the bombing”.

Police seized bomb-making material in raids on two buildings in north Bangkok, but nothing that ties the two men, whose nationalities are unknown, directly to the attack.

The bomb killed 14 people and wounded more than 100.

Investigators were trying to match the second detained man, who was arrested on Tuesday, with DNA left by the prime suspect in a cab, on the backpack, and on a banknote given to a motorcycle taxi driver.