Suspect in bank blast seen on video

Wuhan police yesterday released online three photos of a suspect in a deadly bank explosion on Thursday, and 100,000 yuan (HK$122,000) was offered for tips leading to the man's arrest.

'The police are sparing no effort in investigating the case,' police said on their microblog. 'The suspect was found to being riding a white motorcycle and wearing a white helmet when committing the crime.'

Two passers-by were killed and more than 10 others were injured in the massive blast, which occurred at 5.37pm outside a branch of China Construction Bank on Xiongchu Road, Wuhan, Hubei province.

Police suspected last week that the blast was part of an attempted robbery, but the bank said no money was stolen.

One photo shows a man riding the motorcycle through a pedestrian crossing, and the other two show him walking down the street. In one image, he has his hands in his pockets. He is wearing the helmet in all three images, but his face isn't visible. 'These pictures were from different times and different places, both before and after the explosion,' said Pan Feng, a spokeswoman for the Wuhan Public Security Bureau.

The suspect was seen in different clothes, once in a jacket with camouflage print. Pan would not give the times the images were taken. 'They were taken at places near the explosion, and the pictures were screen captures from monitoring videos taken by different surveillance cameras, including a camera at China Construction Bank,' she said.

Pan said police had received several calls from citizens since the microblog post at 11.15am yesterday, but the information still needed to be reviewed and investigated.

She refused to specify why the man in the images had been identified as a suspect.

An officer from Wuhan's criminal investigation bureau said on Friday that detectives and forensic experts in Hubei had met to piece together evidence, determine suspects and examine possible motives. An initial investigation ruled out the possibility that a gas or fuel leak had caused the explosion, Xinhua reported.