Hundreds of children remain behind redshirt barricades as troops prepare to remove all demonstrators by force

This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

The Thai army today accused anti-government protesters of using children as human shields to keep troops from marching on their protest camp in the centre of the capital.

Hundreds of children remain behind the barricades of the fortified red-shirt compound, hours after a government deadline for them to leave passed, and as troops prepare to remove all demonstrators by force.

On Thai television tonight, an army spokesman, Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd, showed a photo of a young boy being held to stand atop the tyre barricades built by the protesters to hold back advancing troops.

"The reason why officers can't go into the area is because of this – the terrorists are using children and women as their shields," the officer said.

It is not known how long the boy was held on the barriers or how close troops were to him.

Allegations of various abuses are part of the ongoing public relations battle being waged by both sides for the hearts and minds of the Thai and international communities.

But already one child has been killed in the violence which has raged in Bangkok for the past five days. A 14-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by soldiers when the van he was travelling in failed to stop at a checkpoint on Saturday.

For two days details of his death were excluded from the official statistics of the number of people killed – which has now reached 36.

Both sides of Bangkok's deepening political divide now say more violence appears inevitable, with a key protest leader saying their stand will end with potentially hundreds dead – "our Tiananmen Square".

Desperate last-minute negotiations collapsed in acrimony today and the government has vowed not to negotiate again with red shirt protest leaders while demonstrators remain on the streets.

Sources told the Guardian the army was planning to march on protesters in the early hours of Wednesday.

Some 6,000 people remain within the sprawling compound in Bangkok's shopping and finance districts, camped behind barricades of tyres, concrete and sharpened bamboo staves. At least half are women and hundreds are children.

One protester, Kanok Boonmee, told the Guardian she had no family to place her eight-year-old son Gee with while she supported the red shirt movement. "There is nowhere else for him to be," she said. "This protest [is] important for Thailand, he wants to be here [to] change our country." But other parents said they had sent their children to stay with relatives out of Bangkok, as the violence worsened.

Dozens of families also remain trapped in the blacked-out suburbs of the no-man's land between the red shirt barricades and troop lines. The government had demanded that all children, women and elderly people leave the central city protest site by 3pm Bangkok time today, before troops moved in.

Protesters who left before the deadline would not face charges, the government said, but those who remained would be treated as criminals.

But efforts to encourage protesters to leave became mired in bureaucracy and mistrust. Several hundred people who gathered at a meeting point at a temple inside the contested area found that the promised transport to take them to safety had not come.

Elsewhere across the capital, firefights between troops and protesters raged on, with red shirt rocket attacks against luxury hotels housing foreigners. The red shirts also attempted to blow up a gas tanker rolled on to a major road on the southern edge of the conflict.

The Dusit Thani hotel, housing more than 100 foreigners, was targeted by a grenade attack from within the red shirt compound. There were no injuries, but guests were evacuated and the hotel is now closed.

A red shirt leader, Sean Boonpracong, told the Guardian he feared the protest would end as Thailand's Tiananmen Square, with hundreds more dead. "The people are defiant. They do not trust the government. They don't want violence, but they are prepared to fight with their bare hands. The government does not want to negotiate, so I think many more people will die. This will end as our Tiananmen Square."

Another key red shirt, Jatuporn Prompan, said only the intervention of Thailand's King could prevent more bloodshed.

"As people in this country, we would like his kindness. I believe that Thais will feel the same, that His Majesty is our only hope."

Tensions across the city escalated further when it was announced that the red shirts' paramilitary leader, suspended army major general Seh Daeng, had died after being shot by a sniper last Thursday.

As soldiers tightened their control around the red shirts' camp yesterday, the situation on the streets of the contested zone between troops and protesters deteriorated further.

Overnight, black-clad guards red shirts had used the cover of darkness and gaps in the troop cordon to smuggle weapons into their camp, and protesters began looting stores and threatening the few foreigners in the area.