for more threads like this one :
http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...me-line-45276/ Bangkok's tourist heartland a 'no go' zone as clashes leave 21 dead and 800 wounded
Anti-government protesters rejected talk of negotiations today after a month-long stand-off escalated into clashes that killed 20 people in Thailand's worst political violence in nearly two decades.
Tourists in the Khao San Road area of the city – a favourite with foreign backpackers – fled as Thai soldiers and police clashed with protesters during two hours of fierce fighting.
Reports last night said that three ‘Red Shirt’ demonstrators, two soldiers and a Japanese journalist from the Thomson Reuters news agency were among the dead.
Quiet returned to the city today after fierce fighting on is being dubbed 'Black Saturday'.
But parts of the city continued to look like a war zone as bullet casings, pools of blood and shattered army vehicles littered the streets near a main tourist area where soldiers had tried to clear the protesters.
Today Red Shirts showed off a pile of weapons they had captured from army troops during yesterday's fighting, including rifles and heavy caliber machine-gun rounds.
Some wore confiscated army riot gear as they posed for photographs on the ruined military vehicles that lay abandoned.
As British tourists tried to flee the city today, the Foreign Office continued to warn Britons to exercise extreme caution throughout the country and to stay indoors if violence breaks out again.
Backpackers reported being barricaded in their rooms by security guards at their hotels and hostels and staff warning them to stay indoors during the fighting.
Violence erupted yesterday when troops tried to clear one of the protest sites and ended when they retreated.
At least 874 people were injured in what some are calling the 'Battle for Bangkok'.
But protesters continued to occupy their two main bases today - one in the capital's historic district and another on its main upscale shopping boulevard.
Today protesters held a held a procession for the dead near their rally site in historic Bangkok.
Marching with Buddhist monks, they held aloft red coffins and carried photos of the victims. One mother called her son 'a hero' before breaking down in tears.
Protesters also broke into a satellite communications complex in a northern Bangkok suburb, forcing the operators to restore their People Channel television station, which the government has twice shut down.
Government spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn said the government's objective was to avoid more violence and 'to return the city to normal', but indicated there was no clear solution.
But red shirt leader Weng Tokirakarn said: 'The time for negotiation is up. We don't negotiate with murderers.
'We have to keep fighting,' he said, adding the protesters were not planning any action in Bangkok today 'out of respect for the dead'.
Four soldiers and 17 civilians were killed, according to theThai government's emergency centre.
Among the dead was Japanese cameraman father-of-two Hiro Muramoto, 43, who worked for the Thomson Reuters news agency.
Reuters said he was shot in the chest after Thai soldiers fired rubber bullets into crowds and live ammunition in the air to dislodge protesters from encampments in the capital.
During last night's violence, two demonstrators and a Buddhist monk were badly beaten while a Japanese tourist wearing a red shirt was also clubbed by soldiers until he was rescued by bystanders.
Khao San Road resembled a war zone, a Reuters photographer said.
Shop windows were shattered. Cars were smashed. Many people lay wounded on the street.
Police told reporters some protesters ignited cooking gas cylinders and rolled them into troops.
Army spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd last night accused the crowds of firing live rounds and throwing grenades at troops.
He said soldiers had been asked to retreat and urged the demonstrators to do the same.
However, the continuous sound of gunfire and explosions filled the streets last night.
Pichaya Nakwatchara, the director of BMA General Hospital, said at least ten people had been killed.
Most appeared to have been hit by heavy objects while some had gunshot wounds.
The government’s Erawan emergency centre said at least 874 people had been injured.
The Red Shirts, members of the United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorships, are demanding that Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve Parliament and call an election.
On Friday, Mr Vejjajiva was forced to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok following outbreaks of violence.
Mr Vejjajiva said the move – which gave the security forces sweeping powers to tackle the anti-government unrest – would help restore order.
It came hours after thousands of protesters had marched on parliament forcing MPs to flee the building.
Barricaded shopping district
Tens of thousands also remained in Bangkok's main shopping district, a stretch of upscale department stores and five-star hotels held for a week by the mostly rural and working-class red shirts who say they have been marginalised in a country with one of Asia's widest disparities between rich and poor.
The red shirts used taxis and pick-up trucks to barricade themselves in that area, and expanded their control to include several more blocks. Hundreds of riot police who massed at one end retreated after being surrounding by red shirts.
Into evening, many people lined the main street cheering as protesters waving red flags packed pick-up trucks which streamed into the area. Some climbed up electricity poles to cover closed-circuit cameras with flags to stop police surveillance.
The violence comes exactly a year after about 10,000 of the supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra brought traffic in Bangkok to a standstill for several days, occupying major intersections and sparking Thailand's worst political violence in 18 years.
In those protests, red shirts hijacked petrol tankers, torched dozens of public buses and hurled petrol bombs at troops until the army imposed order. Two people were killed and 123 wounded. The latest protests, however, involve more than five times as many protesters spread across several areas of the city.
The protesters say Abhisit lacks a popular mandate after coming to power in a 2008 parliamentary vote following a court ruling that dissolved a pro-Thaksin ruling party.
They want immediate elections that Thaksin's allies would be well placed to win.
The red shirts have won new support from Bangkok's urban poor but have angered middle classes, many of whom regard them as misguided slaves to Thaksin, a wily telecoms tycoon who fled into exile to avoid a jail term for graft.
Hundreds also forced their way into the governor's office compound in the northern city of Chiang Mai and hundreds more broke into a town hall in Udon Thani in the northeast.
The government declared a state of emergency in Bangkok on Wednesday to control the protests after red shirts broke into the grounds of parliament, forcing some officials including the deputy prime minister to flee by helicopter.
The humiliating failure of security forces to stop protesters from besieging parliament and a satellite station two days later has raised questions over the competence and loyalty of Thailand's armed forces in a month of increasingly bold protests.
Source :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...s-Bangkok.html & boston.com & google image search
