Bangkok bombing: Female bomb suspect Wanna Suansan denies involvement

The 26-year-old female suspect in the Bangkok bombings last month has denied involvement in the blasts which killed 20 people, including foreign nationals, and injured 130 others.

The picture of Wanna Suansan, wearing a head scarf and an unidentified Asian man were released by police. Warrants have been issued for their arrests. Suansan, who is also known by her Muslim name, Misaloh, hails from the southern province of Phang Nga, AFP reported.

Thai police said a suspect in custody had given police the names of three accomplices, following which searches were made on several properties in Bangkok. Bomb-making materials were found at an apartment not far from where the first suspect was captured.

The two new suspects were allegedly renting the said property, according to Army Chief Udomdej Sitabutr.

Speaking to AFP by phone, a woman who identified herself as Suansan, said that she was currently living in the central Turkish city of Kayseri with her husband. She told AFP that she last visited Thailand three months ago.

"I have not been to that apartment for almost one year now," she said, adding that she had sublet the flat to a friend of her husband's.

AFP was unable to confirm the identity of the woman it spoke to over the telephone. She said that she was horrified to find out through a friend in Thailand that she had been named as a suspect in the Erawan shrine bombing.

"I was very shocked and thought my friend was joking with me," she said, adding that she had been in contact with Thai police and was happy to cooperate with investigators.

The news agency said Thai police however refused to confirm or deny whether Wanna was in Turkey.

It said that two weeks after the bombing, the motive for the blast remains a mystery and suspicions alternating between Thailand's political rivals, organised criminal gangs, Islamist militants, rebels in the country's strife-torn south and sympathisers of refugees from China's Uighur Muslim minority.