ASIA: Five wounded in Bangkok protest gunfire: police
25 Nov 2008 11:24 PM
BANGKOK, Nov 25 AFP - Five people were wounded in the Thai capital Bangkok on Tuesday when gunfire broke out during a clash between pro- and anti-government supporters, police said.
The incident happened on the road to Bangkok's old international airport, where thousands of demonstrators have surrounded the temporary offices of the country's prime minister in an effort to force him to resign.
"Five supporters of the government have been wounded from gun shots by PAD who were on a pickup truck," a senior Metropolitan police officer who did not want to be named told AFP.
He warned that some supporters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) anti-government protest group were armed and cautioned that there could be more clashes as political tensions escalated in the kingdom.
Police Colonel Piyapong Pholvanich, from the police station close to where the incident happened, told AFP: "I can confirm that there were gun shots."
Thai television reported that clashes broke out when PAD protesters tried to storm a community radio station run by a group of taxi drivers who support the current government.
TV footage showed people in yellow shirts - which symbolise loyalty to the monarchy and have become the unofficial uniform of the PAD - in the back of a pick-up truck as motorcycle taxi drivers attacked them with sticks.
Thousands of PAD protesters besieged the prime minister's temporary offices at the old airport on Tuesday before moving towards Bangkok's main airport, on the second day of a last-ditch effort to topple the government.
The PAD says the current government acts as a puppet of the ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they accuse of corruption and nepotism.
