"The yellow shirt guy is not just the suspect. He is the bomber," Police Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press.
Prawut earlier released several photos of the man, with and without the backpack, on a social media platform. The images were apparently taken from closed-circuit video at Erawan shrine on Monday before the central Bangkok bombing. He confirmed that the man is suspected in the bombing when contacted by The Associated Press.

Video footage posted separately on Thai media appeared to show the same man sitting on a bench at the crowded shrine, then taking off the backpack and leaving it behind as he walked away.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha called Monday's explosion at a shrine at a busy central Bangkok intersection "the worst incident that has ever happened in Thailand," and he promised to track down those responsible.
"There have been minor bombs or just noise, but this time they aimed for innocent lives," Prayuth said. "They want to destroy our economy, our tourism."
Well over 100 people were injured by the improvised explosive device, which scattered body parts, spattered blood, blasted windows and burned motorbikes to the metal. The explosion went off around 7 p.m. in an upscale area filled with tourists, office workers and shoppers.
DIEGO AZUBEL/EPA
A member of an explosive ordinance unit of the police collects evidence Tuesday from the scene where the bomb was detonated outside Erawan Shrine in central of Bangkok on Monday.
"Today we have seen the closed-circuit footage, we saw some suspects, but it wasn't clear," Prayuth said. "We have to find them first."
Later, Prayuth gave his first televised address since the bombing, saying the government will expedite "all investigative efforts to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice," but providing nothing specific about suspects or the status of the investigation.
Thai authorities identified five victims as Thai and four as Chinese — two of them from Hong Kong — along with two Malaysians and one Singaporean, and said the nationalities of the other eight victims remained unknown.
Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said the attack, which no one immediately claimed responsibility for, was aimed at destroying the country's economy by targeting a major tourist area.
"It is much clearer who the bombers are, but I can't reveal more right now," Prawit said, as he headed into a Cabinet meeting Tuesday morning. "We haven't ruled out terrorism."
He acknowledged that authorities had no idea an attack was planned.
SAKCHAI LALIT/AP
Thailand's prime minister on Tuesday promised that authorities would quickly track down those responsible for the Rajprasong intersection bombing, which he described as the country's worst attack ever.
"We didn't know about this ahead of time. We had no intelligence on this attack," the defense minister said.
Prayuth vowed to "hurry and find the bombers," though he noted there may be just one perpetrator. Speaking to reporters, he continued what has been a notoriously prickly relationship with the media since the former general took control of the government in a May 2014 coup.
Asked if there were leads on the suspects' identities, Prayuth bristled, "We are still investigating. The bomb has just exploded — why are you asking now? Do you understand the word investigation? It's not like they claim responsibility."
Thailand has seen many violent attacks in recent years, particularly through a more-than-decade-long insurgency by Muslim separatists that has left more than 5,000 dead in the country's deep south. Those attacks have never extended to the capital, however.
Bangkok has seen politically charged violence over the past decade; the deadliest, in 2010, killed more than 90 over two months and was centered on the same intersection where Monday's bomb went off. But none of those attacks included a bomb blast that seemed intended to produce mass casualties.
Matthew Wheeler, Southeast Asia security analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the bombing was a "new type of attack for Bangkok" that doesn't bear the trademarks of typical violence over the past decade from political instability or Muslim separatists.
CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Policemen inspect the cordoned-off site of a bomb blast at the popular Erawan shrine in the heart of Bangkok's tourist and commercial centre on Tuesday.
"It is certainly not like politically motivated attacks we've seen in the past which have generally been designed to grab attention but not cause casualties," Wheeler said, adding that he expected it would have "major ramifications for security in Thailand."
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