Thai police hunt 'foreign' man, two others for Bangkok blast

Thai police said on Wednesday that a suspect captured by CCTV cameras minutes before a bomb exploded at Bangkok's Erawan shrine was a foreigner, and his appearance suggested he might be from Europe or the Middle East.

Police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri also said investigators were now convinced two other men seen on the grainy video footage were accomplices.

At least 20 people were killed in Monday's blast in the heart of the Thai capital. The government says the unprecedented attack on the city was designed to wreck the country's economy, which depends heavily on tourism.

No one has claimed responsibility for the evening rush-hour bombing, in which 11 foreigners from several Asian countries died and more than 120 were wounded.

Prawut said in a televised interview that an arrest warrant had been issued for a "foreign man", a sketch of whom showed a fair-skinned youth with thick, medium-length black hair, a wispy beard and black glasses.

"He had white skin and must have been a European or have mixed blood, perhaps with Middle Eastern blood," Prawut said, without giving a reason for his assumptions other than the color of the man's skin.

The sketch was based on footage that showed a man dressed in a yellow T-shirt dumping a backpack inside the shrine compound and walking away through a crowd of tourists about 20 minutes before the explosion.

Prawut earlier tweeted that police were offering a 1 million baht ($28,100) reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.