BANGKOK – A series of grenade blasts shook Bangkok’s business district yesterday, killing at least three people and wounding 75, heightening tensions during a showdown between troops and anti-government protesters.
Five explosions hit an area packed with heavily armed soldiers and studded with banks, office towers and hotels. Four people were seriously wounded, including two foreigners, according to hospital officials.
The M79 grenades, fired with a shoulder-mounted launcher into an area where hundreds of pro-government protesters were gathering, were the same type that hit troops during a bloody clash with protesters that killed 25 people on April 10th.
Troops, many armed with M16 assault rifles, have poured into the area since Monday to contain the anti-government “red shirts”, who have formed a barricade at an intersection leading into the bustling district also known for racy go-go bars.
The government said the grenades were fired from the red shirt protest area. Leaders of the red shirts, who have been demonstrating in Bangkok for nearly seven weeks seeking new elections, denied responsibility.
Television footage showed blood splattered across pavements, office windows smashed and a chaotic scene as panicked residents carried the injured into nearly a dozen ambulances.
“It’s worrying, seeing ambulances, people running away. The police and army don’t seem to be in control,” said Herman Koopman, a tourist from the Netherlands.
After the explosions, hundreds of pro-government protesters regrouped and hurled glass bottles and rocks at the red shirts until riot police forced them back with batons. The red shirts responded with more rocks and bottles.
Local media said five people were detained, and later released.
One explosion hit outside the headquarters of Charoen Pokphand Group, Thailand’s biggest agribusiness body.
Another landed near the Dusit Thani Hotel. Others struck parts of the district’s main Silom Road.
After the blasts, troops blocked off roads with razor-wire and trained their guns in the air, looking to rooftops and an overhead railway system.
Not far from the explosions, tens of thousands of red-shirted supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra have fortified their redoubt in a Bangkok commercial district with home-made barricades, expecting the army to evict them any time.
The army earlier yesterday warned it would forcibly disperse the mostly rural and urban poor protesters who have set up a self-contained village in a roughly 3sq km area of an upscale shopping and hotel area in central Bangkok.
Any attempt to disperse them risks heavy casualties and the prospect of clashes spilling into high-end residential areas.
But deputy premier Suthep Thaugsuban said there would be no crackdown last night because women and children were in the area.
He said three people were killed in the blasts.
The health ministry said 75 were wounded.
Leaders of the red shirted supporters of the twice-elected and now fugitive Thaksin say they will only leave when the military-backed government announces early elections.