UPDATED Thailand Latest: Fires and Curfew in Bangkok

UPDATE 1425 GMT: The overnight curfew, announced on TV channels under control of the Government, has been extended to 21 provinces across Thailand. There have been arson attacks and protests in at least seven provinces, including the burning of town halls in three major cities.



Fighting has continued in Bangkok, notably outside the Wat Patum temple.

UPDATE 1155 GMT: Associated Press summarises that fires were set at the Stock Exchange, several banks, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority, the high-end Central World shopping mall, and a cinema complex that collapsed.

Thailand Latest: Protestors Ready for Talks? (Fuller/Mydans)

Four protesters and an Italian news photographer were killed and about 60 people wounded in the Army's storming of the protest camp.


UPDATE 1055 GMT: Central World, Southeast Asia's second-largest department store, has been destroyed.

UPDATE 0945 GMT: Far from stopping the protests, the request of the surrendering Red Shirt leaders seems only to have prompted a spread of fighting. There are reports of at least five fires; among the buildings attacked are the Stock Exchange and Channel 3 Television. Residents are trying to flee deluxe apartment complexes.

Authorities have declared a curfew from 8 p.m. local time.

UPDATE 0735 GMT: Thai television has shown several Red Shirt leaders addressing a crowd in Lumpini Park, the centre of the protests, calling off the demonstration to avoid further bloodshed. The leaders said they would turn themselves in to Thai authorities.

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Al Jazeera English posts the latest news from Bangkok:

Thai soldiers and armoured carriers have punched through barricades and moved into the main encampment of anti-government protesters in Bangkok.

Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay, reporting from inside the breached protest site on Wednesday, said the well organised and well armed troops moved quickly through the first kilometre of the protest site, towards the main stage where the leaders of the so-called red shirts were believed to be.

But they then stopped about a kilometre from the stage amid some exchange of gunfire with red shirt guards.

At least two bodies – suspected to be killed red shirt guards - were seen being removed from the area, our correspondent said, and the Thai Red Cross has appealed for blood donations.

Jongjet Aoajenpong, the director of Police hospital, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that an Italian journalist was shot in the stomach and "died before arriving at the hospital".

Red shirts divided

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan, also reporting from Bangkok, said women and children were still in the 3-sq-km protest area.

But the area in front of the stage appeared to be thinning out, she said, and protesters and leaders appeared divided: some seemed to want to fight the troops but others were just sitting on the ground, waiting to see what would happen.

There were also reports that at least one of the red shirt leaders had fled the scene but they could not be immediately confirmed.

About 100 soldiers armed with automatic rifles and shotguns, along with several machine gun mounted armoured personnel carriers, breached the red shirts' barricade at the southern end of their protest site on Wednesday.

The armoured vehicles had repeatedly rammed the barricade made up largely of tyres, sharpened bamboo poles and razor wire before breaking through the flattened structure.

Troops and red shirts had been periodically exchanging gunfire before the soldiers broke through the barricade.

The military appeared to be moving slowly in their operation, and it was possible that they were leaving the north relatively open for red shirts to leave their encampment.

Earlier in the morning, troops used loudspeakers to tell protesters at the protest site in Bangkok's high-end Rachaprasong shopping district to go home, saying their lives were in danger, our correspondent said.

Guerrilla war warning

Sean Boonpracong, a red shirt spokesman speaking to Al Jazeera from Bangkok, warned that if the troops entered the protest site, "this will be a second Tiananmen Square", referring to China's deadly crackdown on demonstrators in 1989.

"You will see the biggest massacre ever aired on television," he said.

And Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted Thai prime minister whom many of the red shirts support, said on Wednesday that he feared a military crackdown could lead to guerrilla warfare across the country.

"There is a theory saying a military crackdown can spread resentment and these resentful people will become guerrillas," Thaksin told the Reuters news agency by telephone.

Government claims success

The government said hours after launching the offensive on Wednesday that the "security operation ... has been successful".

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a government spokesman, also said on television that protest leaders had fled the area, and called on citizens to report protest leaders if they were spotted outside the camp.

But one of the protest leaders, Nattawut Saikua, appeared on stage in the protest zone several minutes before Panitan spoke and said he had not fled.

The government offered safe passage to unarmed, civilian protesters after moving into the protest camp and said buses were waiting to send them home.

Soldiers were heard shouting that protesters' lives were in danger if they did not surrender.

The authorities had warned the red shirts to leave their protest site by 3 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday, saying that those who remained faced two years in prison.

However, the protesters defied the order and the deadline passed without any action being taken.

Wednesday's military operation comes after the government rejected holding further negotiations with the red shirts until they left their rally site.

A mediation proposal, floated by a group of 64 senators in the 150-member upper house on Tuesday, was accepted by the protesters but rejected by Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister.

Satit Wonghnongtaey, a government minister, said while Abhisit welcomed negotiations, the government insisted "talks will happen only after the protest has ended".

The crisis, which began when demonstrations were launched in mid-March, has now left around 70 people dead and about 1,700 wounded.

Thailand Latest: Opposition General Dies, Fresh Fighting (BBC)

The BBC provides latest news on the political crisis in Thailand:

Renegade Thai general Khattiya Sawasdipol, who was shot on Thursday as he backed protesters in Bangkok, has died, hospital officials have said.

The announcement came amid fresh fighting between the protesters and soldiers after Thai officials rejected a demand for UN-backed talks.

Thailand Latest: Curfew and Ultimatum (AP and BBC)

The government has called on protesters to leave the camp by mid-afternoon or face the prospect of two years in jail.

Thirty-six people have been killed in the violence since Thursday.


Maj Gen Khattiya, known as Seh Daeng (Commander Red), was shot in the head on Thursday as he spoke to a New York Times journalist within the protesters' rally site.

He had been in a critical condition in hospital and had not been expected to pull through.

His shooting marked the beginning of clashes between soldiers and protesters that have raged on-and-off since then.

It is not clear who shot him, but some among the protesters were quick to blame army snipers.

A minute's silence was held for the general at the protesters' camp in the Ratchaprasong district, with some demonstrators in tears.

'A lot of shooting'

About 5,000 people remain in the encampment in the Ratchaprasong, where food and water are running low amid a blockade on the area.

In a television announcement, the government told protesters - particularly women, children and the elderly - to leave the vast camp by 1500 (0800 GMT), saying they would be given free transport home.

Hundreds of women and children have sought refuge in a nearby temple. But Thai media report that many protesters are refusing to take up the offer of safe passage, fearing it is a ruse by the government to arrest or even kill them.

The fresh fighting overnight along a street of upmarket hotels saw the first death among the soldiers, officials said.

Guests at one of the hotels, the Dusit Thani, were rushed from their rooms into the building's basement after gunfire and explosions shook the area.

"Everybody was evacuated from their room and spent the night in the basement," a photographer for the Reuters news agency said. "There was a lot of shooting."
Besides the deaths, about 200 people have been injured in the clashes. Previous violence since the protests began in March has left more than 60 people dead and at least 1,600 wounded.

The Dusit Thani hotel is across from Lumpini Park in a district of expensive hotels, embassies and shopping malls that has been taken over by the protesters.
Army sharpshooters behind sand-bagged barricades have been firing live rounds at protesters.

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said troops were "not using weapons to crack down on civilians". He said armed "terrorists" among the protesters were being targeted.

The protesters, called red-shirts after the colour they have adopted, have been throwing stones, petrol bombs and fireworks at the soldiers and setting barricades of tyres on fire.

There have been reports that some among them are armed.

The latest fighting broke out after the government rejected a call from a red-shirt leader, Nattawut Saikua, to hold UN-moderated talks to end the stand-off, providing the army withdrew from the area around the red-shirt camp.

Panitan Wattanayagorn insisted that no outside help was needed.

"We reject their demands for UN mediation... No Thai government has ever let anyone intervene with our internal affairs," he said.

Protests spread

A state of emergency has now been declared in 22 provinces across the country - mostly in the protesters' northern heartlands - in a bid to stop more demonstrators heading to the capital.

Protests have spread outside the capital with a military bus set afire in the northern city of Chiang Mai and demonstrations in two north-eastern towns in defiance of a government ban.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has declared Monday and Tuesday as public holidays and delayed the start of Bangkok's school term, but a planned curfew was cancelled.

He has already said the army will not back down in its operation to clear the protesters.

Many of the protesters are from poor rural areas in northern Thailand where support is still strong for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.

He is living abroad to avoid a jail term on a corruption conviction.

The protesters say the current government is illegitimate, having come to power in a parliamentary vote after a pro-Thaksin government was forced to step down in December 2008 by a Constitutional Court ruling that it had committed electoral fraud.

Thailand: The Latest in the Crisis; At Least 16 Dead (Mydans and Szep/Ahuja)

Writing for The New York Times, Seth Mydans summarises Friday's violent escalation in Thailand's political crisis. Jason Szep and Ambika Ahuja, reporting for Reuters, add information on the roots of the conflict:

MYDANS

Thai troops on Friday fired tear gas and bullets at protesters, who responded with stones, slingshots and homemade rockets, turning parts of downtown Bangkok into a battlefield as the military tried to tighten its cordon around a broad area where the protesters have camped for weeks.

Sixteen people were killed and 141 wounded, according to the government-run Erawan medical center, in some of the worst violence in two months of unrest. The standoff has paralyzed the Thai government and further fractured a society struggling to cope with the growing demands of its poor.

The fighting followed an assassination attempt on Thursday on a renegade general who had declared himself a protector of the protesters before he was critically wounded by a sniper’s bullet.



The antigovernment protesters, mostly poor rural residents known as red shirts, seized and vandalized several military vehicles, setting at least one truck on fire and cheering as soldiers with riot shields looked on. Protesters pulled soldiers from their vehicles and beat them severely.

Plumes of black and brown smoke rose into the air, and large explosions and gunfire were heard well into the night.

On Friday, streets that would normally have been bustling with traffic were instead littered with stones and bottles and sealed off by soldiers building roadblocks with sandbags and coils of razor wire.

Troops in battle gear crouched behind traffic barriers, pointing their rifles at the bands of motorcycle riders who formed a mobile force for the protesters, while other troops ran along a highway overpass as traffic crawled behind them.

Although the violence has been confined largely to the city’s central area, reports of the political chaos in recent months have hurt tourism, one of the country’s main industries, and left some hotels in the downtown area just 20 percent full.

The army officer who was shot Thursday, Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol, was on life support late Friday, and his doctor said his chances of survival were “almost nil.”

Thai officials had blamed General Khattiya for playing a part in earlier violence and for blocking any chance of peace with protesters. Leaders of the red shirts had also disavowed him, but he nevertheless took control of security for the protesters and was supported by a small, hard-line group of demonstrators.

On Friday, amid the sounds of gunfire and explosions, the United States Embassy, which is near the disturbances, shut down and offered voluntary relocation to employees who lived near the protest area. Other nearby embassies, schools and businesses also closed.

If it is not contained, the violence could widen into the kind of broader conflict that the government has been trying for weeks to avoid. Just several days ago, it appeared the long sit-in might end peacefully when the government offered to move up elections, a proposal that won tentative support from protest leaders.

But that support began faltering even before the general was shot, as the opposition movement bickered over whether the government was doing enough to meet its demands, including the dissolution of Parliament and the holding of a new election.

In response, the government withdrew its offer of an early election and said it would no longer negotiate with the red shirts.

Protest leaders have said that if the military tries to disperse them, supporters elsewhere in the country may stage similar takeovers of streets or government buildings.

However the occupation of parts of the capital ends, deep divisions and tensions are likely to persist in a country that is increasingly split between its poor and its urban elite. Over the past four years, political and personal enmities have hardened, making reconciliation more difficult.

Inside the barricaded protest area on Friday, leaders addressed thousands of demonstrators, vowing to hold their ground and resist any military incursion. “They are tightening a noose on us, but we will fight to the end, brothers and sisters,” one leader, Nattawut Saikua, told the crowd.

Another leader, Kokaew Pikulthong, issued what appeared to be a veiled threat to the government. In the event of a crackdown, he said in a telephone interview, protesters may be forced to break into shopping malls “to survive.”

The protest area, covering about one square mile on roads that surround a major intersection, has grown filthy and fly-infested, with garbage stacking up since the government cut off waste collection and water deliveries for the rally’s storage tanks.

The deputy governor of Bangkok, Pornthep Techapaiboon, said that portable toilets in the protest area would remain in place for sanitary reasons, but that the workers who cleaned them had already withdrawn after being assaulted by protesters.

Because of new military checkpoints, the protesters, who sleep on mats on the street, can leave the site if they choose, but are not being allowed to return.

Those wounded in the clashes on Friday included a camera operator for a French television station and a Thai photographer, both of whom had been shot.

At the perimeters of the conflict zone, demonstrators poured gasoline over high barricades of concrete blocks, tires, barbed wire and sharpened bamboo poles, threatening to ignite them if attacked. They splashed oil on the street in front of one barricade and scattered pellets to create a slippery dry-land moat.

Protesters attached homemade explosives to the ends of sticks, as they do during a traditional rocket festival, propping them inside plastic traffic cones before aiming and sending them with a whoosh in the direction of soldiers. They also fired in the direction of military helicopters.

Some protesters wore motorcycle helmets and carried homemade weapons, including bows and arrows, slingshots and sharpened bamboo poles.

Some prepared to fling plastic bags filled with pungent fish sauce and hot chilies at soldiers.

A man who identified himself as John Redshirt, a disc jockey for an antigovernment radio station, watched as men sat on the ground in a makeshift workshop constructing crossbows from plastic pipe and bamboo.

“We are never scared of the military,” he said in English. “If they come, we have the right to fight back. We can’t just let them kill us and do nothing.”

A nurse at a first aid station inside the camp, Jenny Tan, 56, spoke of possible worsening violence with tears in her eyes.

“We are afraid for the soldiers, too,” she said. “The soldiers are our sons. We are mother, father, sister, brother. So we don’t want any of them to die. Very, very sad. Very, very sad for Thailand.”

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SZEP/AHUJA

Thai troops fired at protesters on Saturday in a third day of fighting on Bangkok's streets that has killed 16 people as soldiers struggle to isolate a sprawling encampment of demonstrators seeking to topple the government.

Clashes continued across central Bangkok as soldiers behind sand bags or atop buildings fired live rounds at protesters armed with petrol bombs. One was shot in the chest while trying to ignite a tyre in Bangkok's usually bustling business district.

At Din Daeng intersection, north of the protest site, three bodies were evacuated on stretchers, a Reuters witness said. Two suffered head wounds. Troops also swarmed into a parking lot at the popular Dusit Thani hotel outside the protest site.

That followed a long night of grenade explosions and sporadic gunfire as the army battled to set up a perimeter around the 3.5 sq-km (1.2 sq-mile) barricaded encampment where thousands refuse to leave, including women and children.

"We'll keep on fighting," said Kwanchai Praipana, a leader of the red-shirted protesters, calling on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to resign and take responsibility for Thailand's deadliest political crisis in 18 years.

He said supplies of food, water and fuel were starting to run thin as their usual delivery trucks were blocked but that they had enough to last "days".

Hardcore protesters, gathering in small numbers, set fire to vehicles, including an army truck, and hurled rocks at troops who set up razor wire at checkpoints and asked residents to show identification cards to stop people from joining the mostly rural and urban poor "red shirts".

The crisis has paralysed Bangkok, squeezed Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy, scared off tourists and choked off investment in one of Asia's most promising emerging markets.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed concern over "the rapidly mounting tensions and violence".

"He strongly encourages them to urgently return to dialogue in order to de-escalate the situation and resolve matters peacefully," his spokesman said in a statement.

The Canadian government urged both sides to return to talks after a Bangkok-based Canadian journalist was shot three times, one of three journalists wounded in fighting that has spiralled into chaotic urban warfare where front lines shift quickly.

"UNLIKELY TO END QUICKLY"

The government said on Friday it would restore order "in the next few days" as the city of 15 million people braced for a crackdown to end a six-week protest by thousands of "red shirts" packed into an area of high-end department stores, luxury hotels, embassies and expensive residential apartments.

The Erawan Medical Centre in Bangkok said 16 people had been killed and 141 wounded in the latest fighting.

"It's unlikely to end quickly," said a source close to army chief Anupong Paochinda, fearing more protesters would arrive to surround and attack soldiers.

"There will be several skirmishes in the coming days but we are still confident we will get the numbers down and seal the area," added the source, who declined to be identified by name.

The number of protesters in the main encampment appeared to have dropped overnight but several thousands remained, many singing and listening to speeches by protest leaders. Some leaders, including the movement's chairman, have disappeared.

Protesters are barricaded behind walls of kerosene-soaked tyres, sharpened bamboo staves, concrete blocks and razor wire.

Before fighting began on Thursday with the shooting of a renegade general allied with the protesters, the two-month crisis had already killed 29 people and wounded about 1,400 -- most of whom died during an April 10 gun battle in Bangkok's old quarter.

The fighting is the latest flare-up in a polarising five-year crisis between a royalist urban elite establishment, who back the prime minister, and the rural and urban poor who accuse conservative elites and the military's top brass of colluding to bring down two elected governments.

Those governments were led or backed by exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a graft-convicted populist billionaire ousted in a 2006 coup who is a figurehead of the protest movement.

The red shirts and their supporters say the politically powerful military influenced a 2008 parliamentary vote, which took place after a pro-Thaksin party was dissolved, to ensure the British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit rose to power.

Five-year Thai credit default swaps, used to hedge against debt default, widened by more than 30 basis points on Friday -- the biggest jump in 15 months -- to 142 basis points.

"With gun battles and grenades going off, investors will look elsewhere," said Danny Richards, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

"I don't think many see the end of this protest as the end of the crisis. When there's an election, either side will reject the legitimacy of the other and we'll be back to square one."