Bangkok bomb blast: Australian singer Jimmy Barnes shares his story of narrow escape

Scottish-born Australian rock singer-songwriter Jimmy Barnes was among the tourists who escaped the Bangkok bomb blast last night. Had he not taken a different route to dinner, avoiding the intersection where Erawan shrine is situated, the story of the rocker and his family would have been different.

Barnes was accompanied by his Thai-Australian wife Jane, daughter Elly-May, her husband Liam Conboy and their young son Dylan, along with an Australian journalist, and had booked for a five-star meal at Bangkok’s Intercontinental Hotel at the day of the blast. They were just 50 metres away from the blast site. Barnes and the journalist left the rest of the family to visit the scene immediately on hearing reports of the blast.

“We have been able to cross back to our hotel, bombs diffused (sic). Bodies still covered on road, terrible, so sad,” Jane tweeted .
Similarly, another Australian tourist named Hassain Masri, who was present when the bomb explosion rocked Central Bangkok Monday night, said “It's something you don’t want to see, don’t want to smell.” He spoke about his narrow escape through the devastating Bangkok explosion that killed as many as 21 people and left more than hundred injured.

The 50-year-old runs a menswear store in Bangkok and visits on a regular basis to refill the store’s stock. On Monday around 9.30pm AEST when he headed towards an ATM, situated across the road near Siam Paragon shopping centre in central Bangkok and opposite to the popular Erawan Shrine, he heard a terrifying blast about 100 metres past the shrine.

“All I heard was, ‘boom’,” he told news.com.au. The immediate aftermath was a scene that he could hardly ever forget, with people yelling and crying all over the place. And when he tried to figure out what happened, he could only see fire for which all the lights had already exploded.

The incident sent shock waves through his spine on seeing bodies and limbs everywhere. “You could smell people burning, that rotten smell,” he said.

He added that the horrific sight of motorcycle burning was something he wished he hadn’t seen. “If I didn’t go to the ATM, I would have been in it too, I would have been walking past” he said.

The bomb, which is believed to have been planted by a woman, has been one of the deadliest in the city. In addition, Lee Jones, an expert in Asian affairs at Queen Mary University, said it was very rare for bomb attacks to occur outside of southern Thailand.

Although four foreigners have been among those killed, but Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade couldn’t confirm if any Australians have been killed. “The Australian government deplores the attack in Bangkok. The thoughts of all Australians are with the injured and the families of those who have lost their lives,” DFAT said .

Meanwhile, Thai police have confirmed the bomb was a 3kg package of TNT packed into smaller pipes and covered in white cloth. A second explosive device was also found inside the shrine and was defused.

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