Friday, April 23, 2010

Bangkok grenade explosions kill three, foreigners among injured

UPDATED
Three people were been killed and an estimated 30-75 injured when three or -- by some accounts -- four grenades went off near the Silom district of Bangkok where an estimated 15,000 protesters and 10,000 police are gathered (Source: Nation).

A video of the aftermath of the event shows injured foreigners being treated and a badly injured fellow being carried away.   As noted in this article, a number of tourists have been circulating among the protesters in hopes of photographing the protesting red shirts' so-called "bamboo fortress"

For background on the situation, see here.

UPDATE 1
It is reported that foreigners were killed in the explosion, and injured include an Australian and a Japanese man:
Ambulances rushed away bloodied victims after the latest explosions, three of which happened at a station of the capital's elevated Skytrain, while one grenade exploded near the exclusive Dusit Thani hotel and another near a bank. (BTS Sala Daeng station).
Red shirts are officially denying responsibility for the attack.   Tonight an area of central Bangkok was, in fact, a war zone.

UPDATE 2
Bangkok Post is now reporting:
The explosions took place shortly after Arisman Pongruengrong, a UDD leader, told red shirt supporters gathered at Ratchaprasong intersection that a group of ''men in black'' would be coming to help the UDD.

Mr Suthep appeared on TV last night blaming ''terrorists'' for the attacks and urging people in Silom to move back from Sala Daeng intersection for their own safety.

He said the grenades had been launched from Lumpini Park, an area occupied by the red shirts...
The article includes an interesting claim the red shirts are making about an incident that happened yesterday night:
The grenade blasts took place a day after ''multi-coloured'' people on Silom threw bottles at the red shirts on Wednesday night in anger at the UDD rally. [JOTMAN: see therelive.com for eyewitness reports on the incident yesterday].

But UDD co-leader Jatuporn Prompan accused the Silom group who attacked the red shirts on Wednesday night of being soldiers and People's Alliance for Democracy yellow shirts in disguise.

''Those who threw bottles and hit us with slingshot were not businessmen and Silom office workers, but soldiers who disguised themselves as anti-red shirt civilians,'' Mr Jatuporn said.
UPDATE 3:  Bangkok Pundit, who is live-blogging the event, noticed something:
BP: The message of what Suthep said was clear, the reds were behind it. On the direction that the M79 grenades were fired from, oddly the anti-Thaskin ASTV Mangaer quotes a witness as stating that the M79 was fired from the 5th floor of Chulalongkorn Hospital.

NOTE: If you want to know where everything is, look at this image [Jotman: I posted it right].  Where the caption is where the BTS station is, the reds lettering is where the reds are, and that white cross is where Chulalongkorn Hospital is.
In other words, if the grenades were launched from the red-controlled triangle of green in the photo, the reds would most likely have been responsible for the attack.  But if it came from the hospital to the left of the park, any group able to gain access to the hospital could have done it.

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