THAI TROOPS opened fire on rioting anti-government demonstrators yesterday as they tried to cordon off the protest site in Bangkok, with seven killed and 101 injured in the day’s mayhem.
The chaos on the city’s streets is the latest escalation in a crisis that threatens to turn into all-out civil war between an urban elite who back prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and the rural and urban red-shirted poor, who say they are disenfranchised and support former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist tycoon ousted in a 2006 coup.
From one side of the intersection in a busy downtown business district, troops fired tear gas into the camp of the Red Shirt protesters. They also used rubber bullets and live rounds.
The anti-government protesters responded by throwing petrol bombs and firing home-made rockets from their occupied territory of luxury hotels and shopping malls, which they have occupied for nearly six weeks.
There were loud blasts and bursts of automatic weapons, witnesses said, and armoured personnel carriers were seen arriving in the area.
“There could be attempts by people who have ill intentions to create instability . . . we hope to return the situation to normal in the next few days,” said government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn in a nationwide televised address. Few in Bangkok can remember what normal is, as life in the city goes on uneasily around the large Red Shirt encampment, passing by heavily armed soldiers watching the occupied zones. Even if the army clear the encamped protesters, the situation is becoming increasingly polarised.
A peace plan advanced by Mr Abhisit proposing early elections in November collapsed after the Red Shirts failed to respond. The two months of protests have degenerated into near anarchy which has killed 31 people, wounded more than 1,400, paralysed parts of the capital including its commercial heart, scared off investors and which looks set to have a major impact on economic growth.
Since fighting began anew on Thursday night, eight people have been killed and at least 112 were wounded, including three journalists.
On Thursday there was an attempt to assassinate a renegade general, Khattiya Sawasdipol, a suspended army specialist better known as Seh Daeng (Commander Red). He was shot in the head during an interview with foreign reporters outside the barricaded encampment. He underwent brain surgery and was in critical condition. The government accuses him of orchestrating dozens of grenade attacks in recent weeks but denied it was responsible for the shooting.
Among those injured was Bangkok-based Canadian journalist Nelson Rand, who was reporting for French TV networks and who suffered multiple gunshot wounds but was in a stable condition. Two Thai journalists were also shot.
The army said it did not plan a crackdown yesterday on the main protest site where thousands of Red Shirts, including women and children, have gathered behind ramparts made from tyres and wooden staves soaked in kerosene and topped with razor wire.
Army spokesmen Sansern Kaewkamnerd said the aim was to cut off the supply line to the occupied areas, and warned that there was an estimated 500 armed “terrorists” among the thousands of protesters in the city.
