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Bangkok: Thailand's military has played down fears that Muslim insurgents waging a bloody war in the country's southernmost provinces were responsible for Monday evening's bomb blast in the Thai capital.
Army chief Udomdej Sitabutr said in a televised interview the tactics "did not match" those used in the past by southern militants.
"The type of bomb used is not in keeping with the south," he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast that killed 22 people and injured more than 100, the largest bomb attack in Thailand in years.
There is no shortage of potential suspects in a country that has been wrecked by sometimes violent upheaval for a decade.
Since seizing power in a coup last year the military has tightly controlled dissent, arresting hundreds of its opponents and banning protests.
But tensions have risen in recent months as the government delayed promised elections until at least 2017 and moved to install in the constitution the power to overrule an elected government in emergencies.
The military has also crushed many of the opponents of Bangkok's powerful elite who have become more entrenched in the institutions of government.
The coup followed a decade-long confrontation between the Bangkok elite and supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a deeply polarising figure in the country.
Last week Mr Thaksin posted a message on YouTube urging his followers to reject a draft of the constitution, declaring it undemocratic.
The bomb also comes at a time that the military-dominated government has moved against powerful mafia-like figures across the country.
There have also been tensions over the military's annual promotion list, a traditional source of unrest among different cliques of the army.
Government spokesman Werachon Sukhondhapatipak told reporters, "It's too early to link the bomb to terrorist attack because no group has come to claim responsibility so far."
But immediate suspicion fell on the southern militants after Monday's blast at the Hindu Erawan shrine during peak hour when there were scores of tourists and Thais in the area.
Thailand's security apparatus was left reeling in April after they linked a bomb in an underground car park of a shopping centre on the resort island of Samui to Asia's longest-running war in Thailand's four southern provinces that has left more than 6300 people dead and at least 11,500 injured.
That bomb was one of a few times militants had ventured out of the Malay-dominated provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, Pattani and the four southern districts of Songkhla province.
Zachary Abuza, head of South-East Asian Analytics and author of multiple books on the conflict, said insurgents have tended in the past to feel that out-of-area attacks were counter-productive, violated their sense of "defensive jihad" and would unleash Thai security forces on them.
But the Koh Samui bombing appeared to be an attempt to sabotage an area of economic significance, which is known to be one of the militants' strategies.
The insurgents routinely do not claim responsibility for their attacks in what experts call Thailand's "forgotten war" because it is rarely reported outside of the country.
In June, Fairfax Media reported growing fears that the insurgents, who have shunned previous attempts to align themselves with Islamic terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, were looking to expand their sphere of influence.
Anusart Suwanmongkol, a member of Thailand's military installed national assembly and a businessman in Pattani, a town in the centre of the violence, warned the conflict had entered a new and even more dangerous phase because of the increasing globalisation of Islam through Facebook and other social media.
The last major bombings in Bangkok were on New Year's Eve at the end of 2006 when three people were killed and dozens wounded.
There was speculation at the time that the perpetrators were supporters of Mr Thaksin, who had been forced from power three months earlier.
But the crimes were never solved.
As forensic investigators began on Tuesday to piece together the sequence of events to try to track the perpetrators of Monday's bombing there was little doubt it was a deliberate act to harm Thailand's tourism and economy.
The Erawan Shrine is a major tourist attraction.
National Police Chief Somyot Pumpanmuang told reporters on Wednesday that police are not ruling out any motive, including ethnic Uighurs.
Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters there were "still anti-government groups out there" but gave no further details.
Thai Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan declared "we will hunt them down" as soldiers and police stepped patrols and manned check-points across the city.
– With agencies
