Three More Nights Curfew in Thailand

Curfews have been imposed for three more nights in Bangkok and 23 other Thai provinces after nine people died in violent clashes on Wednesday.

A meeting chaired by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva agreed to impose the new curfew, said Dithaporn Sasasmit, spokesman for the army-run Internal Security Operation Command. A curfew was ordered in Bangkok and 23 provinces on Wednesday night between 8pm and 6am to control looting and arson.

However, the new curfew would be shortened to between 9pm and 5am, Dithaporn said, to lessen the effect on the public.

Four provincial halls meanwhile in Thailand's northeast, the heartland of anti-government protesters, have been torched as authorities struggle to halt violence in Bangkok from spreading.

Gunshots on Thursday rang out near a Buddhist temple in the heart of the Red Shirts anti-government protest zone in Bangkok, and soldiers were advancing on foot along an elevated train track.

This caused panic in a crowd of some 2000 people who had gathered at the temple where the bodies of six people killed in a gunbattle the day before were laid out.

The crowd retreated into the temple for shelter, as a group of six or seven soldiers took up positions on the Skytrain track, and advanced towards the area.

At the same time Thailand's biggest shopping mall faces collapse after it was set ablaze by enraged protesters, police said on Thursday.

The victims in Wednesday's violence also included Italian freelance photographer, Fabio Polenghi, 45. Several other journalists were wounded, including Dutch television reporter Michel Maas who was shot in the shoulder, and a Canadian who was badly injured along with four soldiers by grenade attacks.

There are fears that the Thai military's overwhelming offensive against the Red Shirts, who had occupied Bangkok's main shopping district for six weeks, will trigger trouble in the rest of the country.