NewWho was behind the Bangkok blast? Thailand says can’t rule out any group as police hunt suspect caught on CCTV

Thai authorities have not ruled out any group, including elements opposed to the military government, for a bomb blast in Bangkok that killed at least 21 people, but officials said the bombing did not match tactics used by insurgents in the south.

However, Thailand’s junta chief on Tuesday that authorities are hunting a male “suspect” seen on CCTV footage near the scene of the bombing.

“Today there is a suspect who appeared on CCTV but it’s not clear ... we are looking for this guy,” Prime Minister Prayut Chan-Ocha said, adding he was believed to be from an “anti-government group based in Thailand’s northeast”, the heartland of the anti-coup "red shirt" movement.

But National Police Chief Somyot Pumpanmuang earlier said that police “are not ruling out anything including [Thai] politics and the conflict of ethnic Uygurs who, before this, Thailand sent back to China."

Thailand forcibly returned 109 Uygurs to China last month.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of the Turkic-speaking and largely Muslim minority have fled unrest in China’s western Xinjiang region, where hundreds of people have been killed, prompting a crackdown by Chinese authorities. Many Uygurs have travelled through Southeast Asia to Turkey.