Troops moving against pockets of resistance after protesters torch Bangkok buildings

Troops move against protest holdouts in Bangkok

BANGKOK — The Thai government declared Thursday it had mostly quelled ten weeks of violent protests in the capital while buildings smoldered, troops rooted out small pockets of resistance and residents attempted a return to normal life.

But a nighttime curfew was extended in Bangkok and 23 other provinces for three more days, and earlier troops and die-hard protesters exchanged sporadic fire in parts of the city.

Three more leaders of the so-called Red Shirts surrendered to authorities Thursday, with one of them pleading for peace. Five protest leaders gave themselves up the day before and were flown to a military camp south of Bangkok for interrogation.

“I’d like to ask all sides to calm down and talk with each other in a peaceful manner. Please dissolve your anger. We cannot create democracy with anger,” said Veera Musikapong after being taken into custody Wednesday.

Army spokesman Col. Sansern Kawekamnerd said the situation in the capital was mostly under control.

A major military operation the day before, in which at least seven people were killed and 88 wounded, was largely successful, but underlying political divisions that caused Thailand’s crisis may have been exacerbated, and unrest spread to provinces in the north and northeast.

Nation Television reported that one person had been killed and 14 wounded in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen, one of several provinces where protests erupted Wednesday.

Bangkok’s skyline overnight was blotted by flashes of fire and black smoke from more than three dozen buildings set ablaze — including Thailand’s stock exchange, main power company, banks, a movie theater and one of Asia’s largest shopping malls.

The government described the mayhem as “an organized crime. It is terrorism.” Sansern, who said 122 police and army units were involved in the operation, said authorities found a cache of explosives and assault rifles during their sweep against the Red Shirts.

Troops in the central business district, occupied by protesters for weeks, exchanged occasional fire Thursday morning with holdouts as locals in the area looted a vast tent city the activists had cobbled together.

A special police unit entered a Buddhist temple inside the former protest site where the government said 5,000 Red Shirt supporters, most of them women, old men and children, had sought shelter in recent days. Associated Press photographers said there was no resistance at the temple as police took away the group to a nearby police station.

Some cried and many were fearful that they would be incarcerated by the military. Others remained defiant.

“We won. We won. The Red Shirts will rise again,” shouted one woman.

Since the Red Shirts began their protest in mid-March, at least 75 people — mostly civilians — have been killed and nearly 1,800 wounded. Of those, 46 people have died in clashes that started May 13 after the army tried to blockade their 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) camp.

Six bodies were found at the temple, but it was unclear when those people died and whether they already were included in the official death toll as collected by the government’s Erawan Emergency Center.

Elsewhere in the city, municipal workers removed debris and collected piles of garbage left in the streets that had been cordoned off by authorities for the past week. With military checkpoints removed in some areas, residents in protest areas were able to leave home to shop. Electricity was restored in some areas.

Sansern said there had been 39 arson attacks, which officials said included office buildings, banks, gold shops, a hotel, government offices and convenience stores.

He said that the arson and looting were “systematically planned and organized” by Red Shirt leaders before they surrendered.

He also said that the military had been restrained in their use of deadly force.

“If we had the intention to attack civilians, the death toll would have been much higher,” he said.

Government spokesman Panithan Wattanayagorn said the rioting was sparked by “disappointment, hopelessness and anger” but the scale could not have been as widespread “if there had not been prior organized planning.”

While many of the rioters were believed to be members of the Red Shirts and their sympathizers, there also was an element of criminals and young hoodlums involved in the mayhem in the city of 10 million people. The violence in one of Southeast Asia’s most stable countries has damaged its economy and tourism industry.

With the top Red Shirt leaders in custody, it was unclear what the next move would be for the protesters who had demanded the ouster of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. The protesters, many of them poor farmers or members of the urban underclass, say Abhisit came to power illegitimately and is oblivious to their plight.

The crackdown should silence the large number of government supporters who were urging a harder line, and the rioting that followed may extinguish some of the widespread sympathy for the protesters’ cause.

But that same violence also showed a serious intelligence lapse by the military, and the failure to secure areas of the capital raised doubt over how any unrest in the protesters’ heartland of the north and northeast can be stilled.

Many Thais feel that any short-term peace may have been purchased at the price of further polarization that will lead to years of bitter, cyclical conflict.

“The Reds rampaged and committed to armed resistance,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “Right now, they are just burning buildings, but later on, what if they picked up arms to fight the bureaucrats, security forces in other parts of Bangkok, and especially in the countryside? So this is just the beginning. The crackdown didn’t make them retreat fully. Things will get much worse still.”

Thitinan said the government will need to seek a political settlement. “The problem now is that who does the government talk to?” he said.

Some point to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup and fled into exile before being sentenced to two years in prison for corruption. The government has accused him of bankrolling the protests and refuses to make any deals with him until he comes back to serve his sentence.

The unrest following the crackdown spread outside Bangkok, with Thai media reporting that protesters set fire to government offices in the city of Udon Thani and vandalized a city building in Khon Kaen. Udon Thani’s governor asked the military to intervene.

TV reports also showed troops retreating after being attacked by mobs in Ubon Ratchathani, and more unrest was reported in the northern city of Chiang Mai, Thailand’s third-largest.

In Bangkok, one of the most striking images was gray smoke pouring from Bangkok’s landmark CentralWorld shopping mall, which was all but totally gutted by fire. One of Southeast Asia’s largest shopping complexes, it measured 550,000 square meters (5.9 million square feet).

The 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was the first for Bangkok since 1992, when the army killed dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators seeking the ouster of a military-backed government in a crisis now known as “Black May.”

Some activists predicted more upheavals lay ahead.

Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a Red Shirt leader, said the movement would go on despite the day’s events.

“This is not the end,” he said. “It will spread further and the situation will deteriorate. Initially, independent mass movements in Bangkok and other provinces will begin, then riots will ensue. This will be done by individuals, not by protest leaders. The crowds will reunite soon.”

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Chris Blake, Denis Gray, Vijay Joshi, Eric Talmadge, David Longstreath, Raul Gallego, Mae-E Wong and Grant Peck contributed to this report.