Army, police step up security after Bangkok bomb

BANGKOK, May 6 (Reuters) Thailand's police and army will tighten security in Bangkok with extra checkpoints around the sprawling metropolis after a small bomb exploded near a royal palace, police said today.

Police, city officials and the army, which ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in September, would mount joint operations in 84 ''risky areas'' of the capital, Police Lieutenant General Adisorn Nonsi told reporters.

They would also install CCTV cameras at 1,700 points, he said.

''The authorities will hold the fort through this month and we will review it again thereafter,'' Adisorn said after last night blast which slightly wounded a man in his 20s.

The bomb, which went off on coronation day, shattered glass in a telephone booth outside the Chitrlada Palace, the Bangkok residence of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Police said it was only intended to make a loud noise and cause panic.

It was not known if Bhumibol, the world's longest-reigning monarch who turns 80 this year, was in the palace.

Police have made little headway in finding the culprits of a series of bombs on New Year's Eve in Bangkok that killed three people and wounded 38.

In the immediate aftermath of those blasts, the army inferred that Thaksin or his loyalists were to blame. He denied any links.

Investigators later suggested Muslim militants waging a three-year separatist insurgency in the Muslim-majority southern provinces may have had a hand in the bombs.

REUTERS AB PM1447