Police would be able to identify suspects with links to one of the nine bomb attacks on New Year's Eve and issue arrest warrants against them next week, acting police chief Seripisut Temiyavej said yesterday.

He did not say how many suspects would face arrest or which of the nine sites they were allegedly involved in bombing.

Assistant police chief Pol Lt General Jongrak Juthanont, head investigator handling the Bangkok bombs, said he expected a request would be submitted to the Criminal Court for the warrants as early as tomorrow.

Department of Special Investigation (DSI) director-general Sunai Manomai-udom said he wondered what evidence police would use to obtain the warrants, as a parallel probe by the DSI into the bombings had found nothing new other than video footage from surveillance cameras at the bomb sites.

Sunai, a former judge, said images of suspects captured from the footage was not enough to be used in court against suspects in most trials.

"I personally believe that the police rushed to make arrests because they needed to show off their performance," he said.

"If the DSI catches someone, the evidence against them must be sufficient and good enough. We don't make arrests to release suspects."

The DSI is now waiting for results of advanced photo analysis from Denmark of certain video footage. Clearer pictures of suspects would be matched with profiles of criminal records or the public identity database.

Sunai said if there was any leak of photos or identities of suspects it would not be by the DSI. He was referring to an earlier media leak of a photo of Ramkhamhaeng University "dropout" Thawalsak Paenae as a suspect.

Thawalsak is wanted by Yala police for his alleged links to many bomb attacks in the Muslim South. He is now on the run.