Bangkok’s business district crippled after bloody grenade attacks near volatile protests

Bangkok business district crippled after attacks

BANGKOK — The Thai capital’s main financial district was partially crippled Friday following deadly grenade attacks and a tense standoff between die-hard, anti-government demonstrators and a government that has yielded vital areas of Bangkok to them.

Many banks, offices, restaurants and a major shopping complex were closed along Silom Road, known as Thailand’s Wall Street. Traffic was light in the normally jammed four-lane thoroughfare, and even many small-time food vendors had left their patches of pavement.

The late-night attacks involved five M-79 grenades shot from near where anti-government Red Shirt protesters have been encamped for weeks, and the blasts struck areas where counter-demonstrators gathered, but the government stopped short of directly blaming the Red Shirts.

The late-night attacks killed at least one person and wounded 86, according to the government’s Erawan Emergency Center, which handles victim counts in crises and disasters.

The head of a key security agency, Tharit Pengdit, urged the general public to avoid the area near the protests and warned that anyone involved in “terrorism” will face the death penalty.

Thousands of mostly rural Red Shirts have been entrenched on Bangkok’s streets since March 12 in a campaign to dissolve Parliament and hold immediate elections, and Thailand’s powerful military has warned them that time is running out to clear the streets or face a crackdown.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern that the situation could escalate and called for dialogue, his spokesman said.

And the U.S. State Department advised American citizens to avoid travel to Bangkok. Earlier in the week, the U.S. had recommended against visiting the Thai capital but did not go as far to advise against it.

“Due to escalating violence in central Bangkok, all U.S. citizens should avoid nonessential travel to Bangkok,” the advisory said. “The possibility of more such attacks cannot be ruled out.”

The latest violence occurred in Bangkok’s financial district where soldiers have been stationed. Across the intersection, Red Shirts have built barricades of tires and bamboo stakes.

Behind the barricades, Red Shirts have created a virtual village complete with sleeping tents, canteens and portable toilets. Five-star hotels, shopping malls and office buildings in the upscale district have closed.

Silom Road is lined with bank headquarters and other office buildings, but also is a popular tourist destination, filled with restaurants and popular nightlife venues. But late Thursday, it looked more like a war zone with grenade blasts lighting the night sky and panicked people fleeing the scene. Some rushed the bloodied wounded to safety as throngs of riot police and armed soldiers swarmed the area.

A protest leader, Nattawut Saikua, said he spent the night in talks with Deputy Prime Minister Korbsak Sabhavasu, but that there appeared to be no resolution to the crisis.

The Red Shirts consist mainly of poor rural supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and pro-democracy activists who opposed the military coup that ousted him in 2006 after months of demonstrations by the Yellow Shirts.

The Red Shirts believe the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is illegitimate because it came to power under military pressure through a parliamentary vote after disputed court rulings ousted two elected pro-Thaksin governments. They want Parliament dissolved and new elections held.

The first three blasts Thursday evening struck an elevated train station on Silom, and passengers were rushed away down the station’s stairs by soldiers who were stationed there.

Two later blasts struck an intersection filled with demonstrators protesting against the Red Shirts as well as bystanders. Chaos ensued, as scores of wounded were tended to and carried to ambulances. The front window of the sandwich shop was shattered, and a pool of blood was on its stoop.

Bangkok’s elevated train and subway transit systems shut nearby stations Friday.

Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the blasts were under investigation but that it was too soon to come to any conclusions. “This is the work of the terrorists that the government has always been wanting to get rid off,” he said.

Since the beginning of the crisis, Abhisit’s government has threatened to curtail the protests but has failed to follow through. Military units from the 200,000-strong army have been routed in several encounters with the crudely armed demonstrators. And the police have often melted when faced with determined rioters.

In a previous paroxysm of violence, 25 people were killed and more than 800 wounded on April 10 when the army sought to clear out Red Shirt protesters from an encampment in another part of the capital.

Since the protests began, 45 incidents of grenade attacks and bomb explosions have rocked the city, said Tharit, who heads the Department of Special Investigations.

Nobody has yet been apprehended, giving rise to speculation, including that some attacks were the work of renegade army officers either seeking to provoke the Red Shirts or to settle scores within the fractious military.

Culprits in violent incidents related to politics are rarely brought to justice. There have still been no arrests, for example, in mysterious bombings on New Year’s Eve 2006.

The anti-Red Shirt group includes office employees, middle class families, academics, some low-wage workers and members of the Yellow Shirts, a group that supports the current government and who themselves rampaged through Bangkok and seized the city’s airports two years ago.

Although some are genuinely aggrieved by the inconveniences wrought by the protests, many seem to have primarily political objections to the Red Shirts, including claiming the movement is directed against the country’s widely revered monarch.

Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker, Denis D. Gray and Grant Peck contributed to this report.