5 people wounded in 3 explosions in Thai capital

Three explosions ripped through a busy neighborhood in Bangkok on Tuesday, wounding four Thai civilians and blowing off the legs of a foreigner whom police blamed for the violence.       

Police Col. Warawut Taweechaikarn, a senior officer in the district, said the wounded foreigner was Iranian.       

One blast occurred inside a house, and grenades caused the other explosions, Warawut said.

One damaged a taxi, and another damaged a telephone booth outside a Thai school.       

A picture posted on Twitter purportedly showed a wounded man lying on a sidewalk strewn with broken glass outside the school, his legs apparently sheared off.       

Three Thai men and one Thai woman were brought to Kluaynamthai Hospital for treatment of injuries, Suwinai Busarakamwong, a doctor there, said.        Several Thai television stations also reported the wounded man was carrying explosives when the blasts happened along Sukhumvit Soi 71, a multilane thoroughfare with businesses and apartment blocks.

They reported an identification card found in a satchel nearby indicated the man was Iranian descent.       

Last month, a Lebanese-Swedish man with alleged links to Hezbollah militants was detained by Thai police. He led authorities to a warehouse filled with more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.       

Israel and the United States at the time warned their citizens to be alert in the capital, but Thai authorities said Thailand appeared to have been a staging ground but not the target of any attack.        

Warawut said the man badly wounded in Tuesday's blasts was not the same suspect police had been looking for in last month's case.       

On Monday, bombs targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. The attack in India wounded four people. Israel blamed that attack on Iran or its proxies, claims Iran denied.