Two bombs rattle luxury shopping mall in Bangkok

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Two small bombs exploded outside a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok on Sunday causing minor damage but no injuries in an attack which Thai police said was aimed at raising tension in a city living under martial law.

The bombs were the first to shake the Thai capital since the military seized power in May to end months of sometimes deadly street protests in the city.

"There were improvised explosive devices detonated by a digital clock," said Police Lieutenant General Prawut Thawonrsiri, a spokesman for the Royal Thai Police.

Prawut said the motive of the attack appeared to be to create panic rather than take lives.

Police said two improvised explosive devices were placed behind power transformers on an elevated walkway linking the overhead rail line to the upmarket Siam Paragon mall in central Bangkok.

Political tension in Thailand has been high since a national assembly hand-picked by the junta last month banned former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from politics for five years.

The same day, the country's Attorney General said she would face charges and a possible jail sentence for negligence.

The decisions angered supporters of Yingluck and her exiled brother Thaksin, although military repression has snuffed out dissent since the coup and the junta has summoned senior politicians critical of the government's handling of Yingluck's cases for a dressing down over the past week.

Ten years of turbulent politics in Thailand have pitted Yingluck and Thaksin, himself a former prime minister, against the royalist-military establishment that sees the Shinawatras as a threat and reviles their populist policies.

This was the first bomb in Bangkok since before the coup, Army Lieutenant General Kampanart Ruddit told reporters.

The attacks showed that martial law could not be lifted, said Kampanart, who is responsible for the Bangkok area.

(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Khettiya Jittapong; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Dominic Evans)