Thai troops opened fire on rioting anti-government demonstrators on Friday in an attempt to throw a security cordon around their protest site, turning Bangkok's commercial district into a bloody battlefield. Troops fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds at the protesters who hurled petrol bombs and launched home-made rockets on roads surrounding an area of luxury hotels and shopping malls they have occupied for nearly six weeks, witnesses said.
-- 8 dead, 112 wounded, including foreign journalist
The violence continued into the night and left the city of 15 million tense, with gunfire and loud blasts heard at several locations around the city where protesters faced off with troops. A journalist working near a group of demonstrators facing off with troops said five loud blasts and multiple gunshots were heard, followed by loud cheers from the protesters.
Fires blazed in the road as troops fired repeated warning shots at protesters who hurled Molotov cocktails in a commercial area dotted with hotels, banks and Western embassies. "We hope to return the situation to normal in the next few days," said government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn. The fresh wave of violence follows an assassination attempt on Thursday on a renegade general who had been advising the protesters and was critically wounded during an interview with foreign reporters outside the barricaded encampment.
Eight people have been killed and at least 112 were wounded, including three journalists, since the fighting erupted Thursday night, according to hospitals and witnesses. A Bangkok-based Canadian journalist working for France 24 television station suffered multiple gun shot wounds but was in stable condition. Two Thai journalists were also shot.
The army said it did not plan a crackdown on Friday on the main protest site where thousands of the red-shirted demonstrators, including women and children, have gathered, protected by medieval-like walls made from tyres and wooden staves soaked in kerosene and topped by razor wire. Army spokesmen Sansern Kaewkamnerd said there were an estimated 500 armed "terrorists" among the thousands of protesters in the city. A source close to army chief Anupong Paochinda said more troop reinforcements would be deployed, fearing more protesters would arrive to surround and attack soldiers.
"It's unlikely to end quickly. There will be several skirmishes in the coming days but we are still confident we will get the numbers down and seal the area," the source said. The turbulence adds to a five-year crisis that pits a royalist urban elite who back Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva against rural and urban poor who say they are disenfranchised and broadly support former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a graft-convicted populist billionaire ousted in a 2006 coup. They say the Oxford-educated Abhisit lacks a popular mandate after coming to power in a controversial parliamentary vote.
Underlining concerns that some members of security forces may be sympathetic toward the red shirts, a Thai policeman fired bullets at soldiers while giving cover to a wounded protester, a Reuters witness said. A police spokesman denied that. The two months of protests have spiralled into a crisis that has killed 34 people, wounded more than 1,400, paralysed parts of Bangkok, scared off investors and squeezed the economy. Thousands of protesters remained defiant, calling for Abhisit to dissolve parliament immediately.
"Abhisit must take political responsibility. Otherwise, there will be more chaos," one leader, Nattawut Saikua, told Reuters. Some protest leaders, including the movement's chairman, have not been seen at their 3 sq-km (1.2 sq-mile) encampment for days. The cost of insuring Thai debt jumped and Thai bond yields fell to a nine-month low as investors rushed to the relative safety of government debt spooked by the latest turn in Thailand's protracted political impasse.
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