Anti-government protesters forced their way inside Thailand's Finance Ministry and burst through the gates of the Foreign Ministry compound on Monday, in an escalating bid to overthrow Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
The seizing of government buildings by protesters, led by the opposition Democrat Party, plunges Thailand into its deepest political uncertainty since it was convulsed three years ago by the bloodiest political unrest in a generation. The protesters' actions "threaten the stability of the government," Yingluck said in a brief televised address.
The protesters accuse Yingluck of being a puppet for her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup and convicted two years later of graft - charges he denies. Thaksin lives in self-imposed exile but exerts enormous influence over his sister's government.
About 1,000 protesters swarmed the Finance Ministry, filling its cavernous marble-floored halls and occupying six other buildings. Many gathered in first-floor meeting rooms, blowing whistles and laying out plastic mats for resting and eating. Occupying its grounds is symbolic, they said, of targeting the money at the heart of the "Thaksin regime". Staff left, moving into a parking lot before leaving.
"I invite protesters to stay here overnight at the Finance Ministry," protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban told the crowd.
"Our only objective is to rid the country of the Thaksin regime," added Suthep, a former deputy prime minister under the previous Democrat-led government.
Yingluck, 46, was defiant, saying she would not step down.
Her broad support in Thailand's vote-rich north and north-east - rural regions that are among the country's poorest - helped her win a 2011 election by a landslide, making her Thailand's first woman prime minister.
That election was seen as a defeat for the traditional Bangkok elite of generals, royal advisers, middle-class bureaucrats and business leaders - a group that backs the Democrats and deeply mistrusts Thaksin and his sister.