BANGKOK (AP) — Two explosions boomed through a busy neighborhood in the Thai capital Tuesday, police said, but it was not immediately clear what caused the blasts or whether there were any fatalities.
A picture posted on Twitter purportedly showed a wounded man laying on a sidewalk strewn with broken glass outside a Thai school, his legs apparently ripped off in one of the explosions.
Several Thai television stations reported the wounded man was carrying explosives at the time. They said an identification card found in a satchel nearby indicated the man may have been of Iranian decent. It was not possible to independently confirm those reports, however.
Police Col. Sittiphab Baiprasert told The Associated Press the blasts occurred about 100 yards (meters) apart on Sukhumvit Soi 71, a multilane thoroughfare that is home to businesses and apartment blocks. He gave no other details.
Local news reports said traffic on the road had been halted while authorities investigated.
Thailand has rarely been a target for foreign terrorists, although a domestic Muslim insurgency in the country's south has involved bombings of civilian targets.
Last month, a foreign suspect with alleged links to Hezbollah militants led Thai police to a warehouse filled with more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.
At the time, the U.S. Embassy had issued an "emergency message" warning of a possible terror threat against Americans in Bangkok and Israel warned its citizens to be on alert as well. A dozen other embassies then urged their own nationals to exercise caution. Thai authorities, though, said Thailand appeared to have been a staging ground but not the target of any attack.
Tuesday's explosions in Bangkok came one day after a motorcycle assailant in New Delhi attached a bomb to an Israeli diplomatic vehicle, wounding four people, including an Israeli Embassy driver and a diplomat's wife. Israel blamed that attack on Iran or its proxies, claims Iran has denied.
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