Gao Yan Ping, from Jiangxi province, China, is overcome with emotion at the Police General Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, after he arrived to claim the body and remains of his daughter and his wife who were killed in the bombing at the Erawan Hindu Shrine. Picture: AP / Sakchai Lalit Source: AP

The man detained near the border with Cambodia on Tuesday is the second foreigner held over the August 17 blast at a religious shrine which killed 20 people, mostly ethnic Chinese tourists. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha said the unidentified foreigner was picked up in Sa Kaeo province on the Thai side of the Cambodian border.

Asked whether he is thought to be the person who planted the bomb at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok’s busy Chidlom shopping district, he replied: “We are interrogating. He is a main suspect and a foreigner.”

National police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said investigators believe the suspect is “an important person in the network” behind the bombing, Thailand’s worst single mass-casualty attack.

The man speaks English, Prawut said, adding he appeared “similar” to a prime suspect captured on security camera footage wearing a yellow shirt and leaving a bag at the scene moments before the blast.

Thai media on Tuesday widely published a photo of a Chinese passport photo of the arrested man.

In the passport, he is named Yusufu Mieraili, 25, from Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is the home province for China's Uighur Muslim minority, the Bangkok Post reported.

The man was detained around noon trying to cross into Cambodia from the Thai countryside, away from towns or roads.

DNA samples were being taken from the man, the spokesman added, to see if they match any locations searched by police.

Thai police on Monday said they found bomb-making materials in a second apartment following the arrest of another foreign suspect.

Speculation has grown that the suspect might be part of a group seeking to avenge Thailand’s forced repatriation of ethnic Uighurs to China in July. Prayuth on Monday suggested the bombers might have been involved in smuggling Uighurs out of China.

Uighurs are related to Turks, and Turkey is home to a large Uighur community.

The Erawan Shrine is especially popular with Chinese tourists, feeding the idea that it could be a target for people who believe the Uighurs are oppressed by China’s government.

Beijing says some Uighurs are Islamist terrorists, and among them is a group that has been smuggled out of China to join Islamic State fighters in Syria.

The man held in Cambodia is believed to be the main suspect in a bombing that killed 20 people at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok on Monday, August 17, 2015. Picture: Royal Thai Police via AP Source: AP

Prayuth said officials knew from their investigation that people involved in the bombing were about to flee the country and had traced the man to Aranyaprathet district in Sa Kaeo, a major crossing point to Cambodia. He was bound for Phnom Penh.

The prime minister described the man as a piece in a jigsaw puzzle that would connect various parts of the case, which included a bombing the day after the shrine blast that exploded harmlessly in the river next to a busy Bangkok pier.

Fresh arrest warrants are also out for three new suspects for possessing bomb-making material.

One was unnamed but the other two were identified as Ahmet Bozaglan and Ali Jolan, although Prawut did not give their nationalities.

Thai police detained a foreigner on Saturday at a flat in a Bangkok suburb, allegedly in possession of bomb-making paraphernalia and dozens of fake Turkish passports.

He is in military custody but has not been publicly identified.

A 26-year-old Thai Muslim woman called Wanna Suansan was named on Monday on another arrest warrant.

Police say she rented a separate flat in the city suburbs where bomb-making equipment was also found.

Thai authorities confirmed on Tuesday that Wanna is overseas but refused to say where.

Damage caused by the bomb blast is seen on the Brahma statue at the reopened Erawan shrine, the popular tourist site where 20 people were killed on August 17, in Bangkok. Picture: AFP / Christophe Archambault Source: AFP

Late on Monday AFP tracked down her number and a woman answering that name took the phone call, saying she was living in the Turkish city of Kayseri with her husband.

She denied involvement in the blast, saying she had not visited the flat where the bomb-making equipment was found for around a year.

Instead, she said it had been rented to a friend of her husband.