A series of grenade blasts shook Bangkok's business district today, killing at least one person 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 were seriously wounded, including two foreigners, according to witnesses, hospital officials and an army spokesman.
The grenades were fired into an area where hundreds of pro-government protesters were gathering.
Troops, many armed with M-16 assault rifles, have poured into the area since Monday to contain "red shirt" protesters, who have formed a barricade at an intersection leading into the bustling district.
The explosions were caused by M-79 grenades, Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd told Reuters. The same type of grenade - fired with a shoulder-mounted launcher - hit troops during a bloody clash with protesters that killed 25 people on April 10th.
Col Sansern said the grenades seemed to have been 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 they were responsible. One explosion hit outside the headquarters of Charoen Pokphand Group, Thailand's biggest agribusiness group. Another landed near the Dusit Thani Hotel.
Nearly a dozen ambulances streamed into the area. Many victims were wounded by shrapnel. After the explosions, 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.
Earlier, the army warned it would forcibly disperse the mostly rural and urban poor protesters who have set up a self-contained village in a roughly three square-kilometre area of an upscale shopping and hotel area in central Bangkok. "Your days are numbered," Col Sansern told protesters.
"If you leave now, you won't be prosecuted. But if you wait until the security forces enter, you will be prosecuted. You could also be hit by stray bullets during clashes between the security forces and heavily armed terrorists."
Red shirt leaders say another attempt to evict them would be futile. They say they will only leave Bangkok when Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announces early elections.
Leaders of the red shirted supporters of twice elected and now fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra say they will only leave when the embattled, military-backed government announces early elections.
They say the British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit came to power illegitimately, heading a coalition the military cobbled together after courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin party that led the previous coalition government.
Analysts say the protests are radically different from any other period of unrest in Thailand's polarising five-year political crisis - and arguably in modern Thai history, pushing the nation close to an undeclared civil war. They have evolved into a dangerous standoff between the army and a rogue military faction that supports the protesters and includes retired generals allied with twice-elected and now fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
A pro-government group said earlier it plans to gather 50,000 people for a rally tomorrow outside the prime minister's office in central Bangkok to voice opposition to the red shirts, splitting the capital into opposing groups and heightening the risk of clashes.
The crisis has decimated Thailand's important tourism industry and was the key reason the central bank left interest rates at a record low on Wednesday.
Reuters