Security forces threw a protective cordon around the Thai king's residence in Bangkok yesterday and planned to step up security throughout the capital following a bomb explosion which wounded one person, police officers said.
The small explosive device went off on Saturday night on a road opposite Chitralada Palace, slightly injuring a 22-year-old man and damaging a telephone booth.
The blast occurred on coronation day, which celebrates King Bhumibol Adulyadej's accession to the throne.
Metropolitan police chief Major General Adisorn Nontree said that authorities will tighten nighttime security in Bangkok, focusing on 84 sites including embassies, department stores and government offices.
As of last night, the security force will be doubled to some 600 police and soldiers and the installation of more than 1,000 close-circuit cameras will be speeded up, he said.
"It was just an attempt to cause chaos," Adisorn said about Saturday's explosion.
When asked if there was any significance to the site of the explosion, police spokesman Major General Ronnarong Yangyuen said: "We still can't draw any conclusions. The bomb site was near several important places."
These also included a former office of the Thai Rak Thai party of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra which now belongs to a business enterprise once under his control, according to the TV channel TITV, formerly known as iTV.
Major General Patcharawat Wongsuwan, the kingdom's deputy police chief, would not speculate on who might have planted the bomb, but said forensic tests were ongoing.
"It was a simple bomb. Anybody who went to technical college could make it," he told reporters. "It aimed to cause a disturbance."
Thailand has been rocked by both political instability following a military coup last September which ousted Thaksin and a bloody Muslim insurgency in its southernmost provinces.
Nine bombs exploded in Bangkok on New Year's Eve, killing three people and wounding more than 40.
Authorities have yet to unravel the motives behind the attacks or arrest the perpetrators but it is generally believed that politics rather than the insurgency were responsible for the bombings.
The military-installed government says that die-hard followers of Thaksin are trying to create an atmosphere of instability in the country which could facilitate his return to power.
Chitralada Palace, set in a square-walled compound, used to be the prime Bangkok residence of the king and members of his family, but in recent years the monarch has been spending most of his time at the seaside resort of Hua Hin.
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