An arrested suspect of the recent Bangkok blast is shown in this Thai Royal Police handout released August 29, 2015. REUTERS/Thai Police/Handout via Reuters

By Pairat Temphairojana and Khettiya Jittapong

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Police hunting the perpetrators of Thailand's deadliest bombing arrested on Saturday a foreigner they said matched the description of a man who left a bag at the crowded site of a blast in Bangkok nearly two weeks ago.

Police raided a four-floor budget apartment in a suburb of the capital and found fake passports and bomb-making materials possibly used in the Aug. 17 attack at a Hindu shrine that killed 20 people and shook Bangkok's bustling commercial heart.

The suspect was a 28-year-old foreigner who had been in Thailand since January last year and was being held at a military facility on initial charges of possessing illegal explosives, police said.

"It's unlikely to be terrorism. It's not an international terrorist act," Police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang told a news conference.

Somyot did not explain how police had come to that conclusion, but said the motive was "taking personal revenge for his comrades". He did not elaborate.

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An arrested suspect of the recent Bangkok blast is shown in this Thai Royal Police handout released …

The bomb tore through the crowded Erawan Shrine, one of the country's top tourist attractions and close to several of Bangkok's most luxurious hotels and its biggest shopping malls.

Among the dead were 14 foreigners, seven from mainland China and Hong Kong, in an attack the military government said was a strike at Thailand's ailing economy.

With few clues so far, speculation has been rife about who masterminded the devastating attack, the scale of which Bangkok has never seen, despite going through a decade of intermittent political turmoil in the capital.

National police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said more people were being sought and evidence pointed to the arrested man's involvement in a second bomb a day later in the city's Sathorn area, which caused no damage.

"We found he's connected to both Bangkok blasts," Prawut said. "We believe the perpetrators are from the same group."

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Thai Royal Police officials remove evidence from the site where a suspect of the recent Bangkok blas …

MURKY PROBE

The prime suspect is a young man with shaggy dark hair dressed in a yellow shirt seen on grainy closed-circuit television footage dropping off a backpack and casually leaving the scene before the bomb went off.

A televised announcement showed still images of bags full of what appeared to be bomb-making materials and a photograph of a barefooted man, hands behind his back, with a beard and hair shaven short.

Police showed another image of a Turkish passport with a photograph that appeared to be the same man but police indicated the passport was fake.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Speculation in media and among experts has been rife about who has motive and capability to carry it out, pointing to southern ethnic Malay separatists, opponents of the ruling military, international extremists or sympathizers of Uighur Muslims, of which Thailand forcibly repatriated more than 100 to China last month.

Many of the Turkic-speaking minority Uighurs who hail from China's far west and have sought passage via Southeast Asia to Turkey. Thai police said on Thursday they were looking into recent arrivals from Turkey as part of their bomb probe.

Police had made little progress and have been criticized for providing contradictory information. Reuters reporters on Friday found the authorities had not checked some CCTV footage taken minutes after the blast, which featured a man dressed like the chief suspect.

(Additional reporting by Aukkapon Niyomyat and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Will Waterman)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un holds an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang August 28, 2015. REUTERS/KCNA

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has agreed to Red Cross talks with South Korea to discuss reunions of families separated during the 1950-53 Korean War, a South Korean official said on Saturday, setting up the first meeting under a recent accord aimed at defusing tensions.

The accord reached on Tuesday pulled the rivals back from the brink of an armed conflict. The two sides agreed to work towards resuming the meetings of families, an emotional issue given the advancing years of surviving family members.

An official from the Unification Ministry said in Seoul a message had been sent on Saturday in which North Korea's Red Cross accepted the South's proposal to meet on Sept. 7 at the Panmunjom truce village that sits on their heavily armed border.

Nearly 130,000 South Koreans looking for family members in the North have registered with the government in Seoul. About 66,000 are still alive, with most aged 70 or more, according to Unification Ministry data.

About 18,800 people have been reunited during three-day events before returning, mostly since 2000.

On Tuesday, the two Koreas agreed to end a military standoff that sparked an exchange of artillery fire after the South began propaganda broadcasts in response to a landmine blast that seriously wounded two of its soldiers.

Seoul and Pyongyang have remained technically in a state of war since Korean war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait)

Addis Ababa (AFP) - South Sudan's rebel chief Riek Machar ordered his troops to lay down their arms in line with a ceasefire to end a 20-month civil war, his spokesman said Saturday.

His rival, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, had on Thursday ordered all government troops to stop fighting rebel forces as part of the agreement to end the conflict, which has left tens of thousands dead.

No clashes were reported between the two sides Saturday morning, according to both Machar's spokesman and the regional eight-nation IGAD bloc which brokered the ceasefire deal along with the United Nations, the African Union, China, Britain, Norway and the United States.

But the government accused rebels of attacking its forces in the strategic northeastern town of Malakal in violation of the deal.

"The rebels yesterday attacked our position in Malakal but they were repulsed and this morning they again attacked Malakal," said government spokesman Michael Makuei.

"This is a violation of the cessation of hostilities of the agreement and it should be recorded".

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South Sudan's President Salva Kiir (C) before signing peace agreement in Juba on August 26, 2015 …

It was impossible to verify the claim independently.

Makuei, who is also minister of information, led the government team at the negotiations over the ceasefire but is believed by observers to be hostile to the peace deal.

The accord gave a 72-hour deadline for a permanent ceasefire, which comes into effect around sunset on Saturday.

The UN Security Council on Friday called for the ceasefire to begin immediately and threatened sanctions against those who undermine the accord.

Machar's spokesman, Nyarji Roman, earlier Saturday said the former vice president had ordered his rebel troops to lay down their arms in line with the accord.

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Businesses in Melut in Upper Nile state on June 13, 2015, shortly after their destruction during fig …

Machar "gave a declaration of a permanent ceasefire to his troops last night," the spokesman told AFP.

Kiir's spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, told AFP on Friday the president had ordered the entire army "to stop shooting and remain in their barracks where they are, but they can shoot in self-defence once attacked".

Late on Thursday, rebels accused the army of attacking their positions in the northern battleground state of Unity. The army did not respond, but has previously dismissed rebel claims as lies, or accused them of launching attacks.

Facing the threat of international sanctions, Kiir signed the deal on Wednesday but annexed a list of reservations that he said would have to be addressed for the deal to take hold in the world's newest nation.

Machar has said the reservations cast "doubts" on the government's commitment.

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Broken weapons handed in by displaced people at the UNMISS base in Juba on December 9, 2014 (AFP Pho …

Two powerful rebel generals, Peter Gadet and Gathoth Gatkuoth, split from Machar earlier this month, accusing him of seeking power for himself.

The government has said the split is a key reason they doubt the peace deal can be effective.

The signed deal gives the rebels the post of first vice president, which means that Machar would likely return to the job he was sacked from in July 2013, an event which put the country on the path to war later that year.

But the 12-page government list of reservations on the peace deal calls this a "humiliation" and a "reward for rebellion", and insists the post of first vice-president must be on equal footing with the current vice-president, whose post remains.

Fighting erupted in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of planning a coup, unleashing a wave of killings that split the country along ethnic lines.

At least seven ceasefires have already been agreed and then shattered within days or even hours.

Over two million people have fled their homes from a war marked by ethnic killings, gang rapes and child soldier recruitment. Some 200,000 terrified civilians are sheltering inside UN bases.

Under the peace deal, a "transitional government of national unity" will take office within three months.