Grenade wounds 8 Thai protesters ahead of Sunday rally

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-22 13:55

BANGKOK - A grenade blast wounded 8 protesters occupying the Thai prime minister's office on Saturday, raising tension on the eve of a major anti-government rally, police and protest leaders said.

"An M-79 grenade exploded 50 metres outside our camp and wounded our brothers as they patrolled nearby," Chamlong Srimuang, a co-leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), told supporters at Government House.

Two PAD guards were seriously wounded in the attack which occured around 2 am, police said.

The PAD is calling Sunday's march on parliament "its final battle" to oust the government, which it blames for a grenade attack on their Bangkok protest site on Thursday that killed one person and wounded 23.

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, whom the PAD accuse of being the puppet of exiled leader Thaksin Shinawatra, his brother-in-law, has denied any involvement in the grenade blast.

Somchai is attending an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru until the latter half of next week.

Police are braced for violence at the Sunday rally and have asked the army for reinforcements to prevent a repeat of last month's bloody street battles, in which two people were killed and hundreds wounded.

Major bloodshed would raise the chances of a military coup only two years after the army's removal of Thaksin, although army chief Anupong Paochinda has said repeatedly a putsch would do nothing to resolve Thailand's fundamental political rifts.

Public sector unions have called for a nationwide strike on Tuesday unless Somchai stands aside, a threat that, if carried out, would deepen the economic impact of a political crisis now in its fourth year.

The PAD is led by a group of royalist businessmen, academics and activists who say they are fighting to prevent Thaksin, now living in exile, from returning to power following his removal in a bloodless 2006 coup.

Its campaign, which started in late 2005 and contributed heavily to the coup, has paralysed government decision-making and exacerbated the threat of recession in Thailand as its export-oriented economy takes a hit from a global slowdown.