Against ‘red shirts’: One killed as Thai protest turns violent

Clashes also wound 10 others.

BANGKOK: At least one person was shot dead and 10 were wounded after anti-government protesters clashed with supporters of Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Saturday, the first bloodshed in a week of demonstrations aimed at toppling her administration. Fighting intensified after anti-government protesters attacked a bus they believed was full of government “red shirt” supporters. As darkness fell, gunfire erupted outside a sports stadium in Bangkok’s Ramkamhaeng area where about 70,000 red-shirted supporters of Yingluck and her brother, ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, had gathered for a rally. A gunman fired into Ramkamhaeng University, where hundreds of anti-government protesters had retreated after trying to block people from entering the stadium, witnesses said. It was not immediately known who fired the shots, but the violence raises the stakes in a conflict that broadly pits Bangkok’s middle class, royalists and business leaders against the mostly rural, northern supporters of Yingluck and her billionaire brother Thaksin.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2013.