Thai police match fingerprint to bomb suspect

The probe into Thailand's deadliest bombing at a Brahma temple, here gathered momentum on Wednesday, with the police announcing that the fingerprints of a suspect arrested near the Cambodian border matched those found on a bottle containing bomb-making materials.

"Police can confirm that this man is directly involved with the bomb material," Police spokesman General Prawut Thawornsiri said that the suspect arrested in the border province of Sa Kaew in connection with the August 17 bombing at the Erawan Brahma shrine.

Twenty people were killed and over a 100 injured in the blast.

"The results from fingerprint analysis confirmed that his fingerprints were on the bottle that contained explosives" found inside an apartment raided on Saturday.

The raid had followed the arrest of a foreign male from the apartment.

Two foreign men are now in custody - police have not confirmed their nationalities but they say the suspect held on Tuesday closely resembles a man wearing yellow seen on security camera footage leaving a bag at the shrine shortly before the blast.

Prawut said that the man arrested near the Cambodian border was suspected of either making or carrying bombs used in the attacks in Bangkok on August 17 and 18.

Police and soldiers arrested him in forest near the Thai-Cambodian border in Aranyaprathet district of Sa Kaeo on Tuesday. He was said to be walking towards Cambodian territory and away from an official border crossing.

Police chief Somyot Poompunmuang confirmed again on Wednesday that police believed the second arrested foreigner was the man suspected of placing a backpack containing the bomb under a seat at the Erawan brahma shrine and then leaving, shortly before it exploded on Aug 17.

To assist with the identification of the bomb suspect, Prawut asked the public for help contacting another man, wearing a blue shirt, who was seen on surveillance tape taking a photo of a friend at the shrine, about the same time.