By Nopporn Wong-Anan
Fri Jan 5, 11:40 AM ET
BANGKOK (Reuters) - The New Year bombs that killed three people in the Thai capital were part of a concerted bid to undermine the post-coup government, the army chief said on Friday after rumors of another military putsch swept the jittery city.
"It is a movement to disrupt the national security, the society and the economy," Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who staged a September 19 coup against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said on army-run Channel 5 television.
Late on Thursday, as rumors of major troop movements around Bangkok sped through its 9 million inhabitants, Sonthi denied any plots to unseat the post-coup administration and the Council for National Security (CNS), as the coup command is now called.
As a measure of the panic, one theory was that the CNS was staging a coup against itself to boost its prestige and status after a problem-strewn three months in charge, culminating in the unprecedented New Year's Eve bombings.
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