Bomb scene investigators
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A major Asian city is rocked by a car bomb as VIPs arrive for a summit. Nearby, a man detonates his suicide vest. People gather, emergency crews arrive - then a third explosion rips through the crowd.
That's the all-too-familiar scenario presented to Southeast Asian police officers at a U.S.-funded training course on investigating blast scenes.
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The two-week course, taught by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), is held at least once a year in Thailand. Recent events have added new urgency to otherwise routine training.
On 14 January, days after the course began, Indonesian militants launched an attack in central Jakarta with pistols and homemade bombs. Eight people died, including the four militants.
Islamic State claimed responsibility, raising fears of more violence by the group's supporters across the region.
Five months earlier, another improvised explosive device (IED) tore through a popular shrine in Bangkok, killing 20 people, most of them foreign tourists.
"The whole world knows there is a bomb threat in Southeast Asia now," said Gunalan Muniandy, one of eight Malaysian police officers taking the course with counterparts from Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. "We better get prepared for the future."
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The IEDs were then detonated from a safe distance. When the suicide vest exploded, the nearby car was briefly engulfed in a fireball before reappearing as a smouldering wreck.
"Everyone in that car is dead," said Michael A. Eldredge, a veteran ATF bomb technician based in Baltimore who worked on the bloody aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
