Bangkok's tourist heartland a 'no go' zone as clashes leave 21 dead and over 800 wounded



Britons yesterday joined a mass exodus of tourists from Bangkok after at least 21 people were killed in bloody anti-government demonstrations.



Soldiers shot dead 16 'Red shirt' protesters demanding that the Thai parliament should be dissolved and elections called.

Four soldiers, including a colonel, died during pitched battles on Saturday night as protesters seized army personnel carriers. A Japanese cameraman with Reuters was also killed.

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Bullet casings, pools of blood and shattered military vehicles littered the streets near Khaosan Road, an area in the Thai capital popular with backpackers.

Among Britons who fled were teachers Lorraine McKenzie and Kim Shilton, who were hoping to get to the island of Koh Samui.

Miss Shilton, 34, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, said: 'We were in our room in the Buddy Hotel when we heard what seemed like fireworks. We rushed out to look but security guards barricaded us inside.



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'There was a huge melee outside. Then after a while there was a big bang. Bombs were going off, people were shooting, and the Thai hotel staff members were trying to keep all their guests inside all along the road.'

The Foreign Office stopped short of advising travellers not to visit the country, but said they should take 'extreme caution'.



Protesters have rejected talk of negotiations after a month-long stand-off escalated into what has become Thailand's worst political violence in nearly two decades.

Red Shirts showed off a pile of weapons they had captured from army troops during Saturday'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.



A Thai soldier lies on the ground after a clash with anti-government 'Red Shirt' protesters during a rally in Bangkok



Thai troops fired rubber bullets at demonstrators as they moved in to clear a protest site in the biggest confrontation in the month-long campaign for new elections

Violence erupted on Saturday 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 yesterday - one in the capital's historic district and another on its main upscale shopping boulevard.

Protesters yesterday 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.

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.

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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 had not planned any action in Bangkok yesterday 'out of respect for the dead'.



Among those killed was Japanese cameraman father-of-two Hiro Muramoto, 43, who worked for the Thomson Reuters news agency.



Caught up: Tourists stand near blood on a Bangkok street, left, as many foreigners attempt to flee the city after violent clashes which left Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto, right, dead

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 the 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 and many people lay wounded on the street.



Paramedics rush an injured Thai army soldier to an ambulance after he was injured during the skirmishes



An anti-government protester uses a slingshot during violent confrontations which left ten dead

Police told reporters some protesters ignited cooking gas cylinders and rolled them into troops.

Army spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd 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 on Saturday night.



'Red Shirts' throw tear gas canisters back to army soldiers at the Phan Fah Bridge area in Bangkok

A Thai Buddhist monk suffering from tear gas sits as Thai soldiers pass by following clashes at Democracy Monument in central Bangkok

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.

Protesters sleep outside a shopping mall in Bangkok after the government blocked an opposition TV station and dozens of websites as they tried to control the rallies



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.

A protest leader agitates tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Bangkok's central shopping district



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.

