Soldier dies in Thai fighting; luxury hotel hit
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A soldier died in fighting between Thai troops and anti-government protesters in Bangkok early on Monday officials said, after authorities rejected demands for U.N.-supervised talks to end two months of protests.
A Reuters photographer reported heavy fighting during the night at the luxury Dusit Thani Hotel in the Silom area, right opposite one of the barricades set up by the "red shirt" protesters around their 3 sq-km (1.2 sq-mile) encampment.
"Everybody was evacuated from their room and spent the night in the basement," said the photographer. "There was a lot of shooting," he said, adding that fire had damaged the lobby.
The fighting has now killed 35 people since Thursday, Erawan Medical Centre said, while Thai TNN TV said the first soldier to die in the latest bout of violence was killed in clashes in the Silom Road business area.
Thai TV reported that one person was killed when grenades were fired at the Dusit Thani Hotel, but that could not immediately be confirmed.
"We cannot retreat now," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a televised statement late on Sunday, encapsulating the government's all-or-nothing campaign to end protests seeking to topple his fragile, six-party coalition.
Monday and Tuesday were declared public holidays, but banks and financial markets will open.
The mostly rural and urban poor protesters, supporters of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, accuse the government of colluding with the royalist elite and meddling with the judiciary to bring down two Thaksin-allied governments.
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Analysts and diplomats said the military had underestimated the resolve of thousands of "red shirt" protesters who had taken over a district of luxury hotels and shopping malls from April 3.
"Unless the government cracks down and does so decisively -- and that's a big if -- we are going to be seeing rioting and guerrilla warfare, possibly spreading out to other areas," said an Asian diplomat who declined to be identified.
That has already started to happen.
A state of emergency has spread to more than a quarter of the country after emergency decrees were declared in five more provinces on Sunday, bringing the total to 22, as violence erupted in the north and northeast, a Thaksin stronghold home to just over half of Thailand's 67 million people.
In Ubon Ratchathani province, protesters burnt tyres on several roads. One group tried to break into a military compound but were forced back by soldiers firing guns in the air.
At least 64 people have died and more than 1,600 have been wounded since the red shirts began their protest in mid-March.
A red shirt leader, Nattawut Saikua, called for a cease-fire and U.N.-moderated talks to end the violence that began on Thursday evening with an attempted assassination of a renegade general advising the red shirts, who was shot in the head.
The government dismissed the offer. "If they really want to talk, they should not set conditions like asking us to withdraw troops," said Korbsak Sabhavasu, the prime minister's secretary-general.
(Additional reporting by Jason Szep, Ambika Ahuja, Ploy Ten Kate, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Martin Petty; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by David Fox)