A series of grenade blasts that hit Bangkok's business district today killed at least three people, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban told reporters.
He also said the government had no plan to crack down on anti-government protesters in the area, because women and children are among them.
The five grenade blasts wounded 75 people, including four foreigners, in an area packed with heavily armed soldiers and studded with banks, office towers and hotels.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has had no reports of any Irish among those injured in today's explosions.
The grenades were fired into an area where hundreds of pro-government protesters were gathering.
Troops, many armed with M-16 assault rifles, have poured into the area since Monday to contain ‘red shirt’ protesters, who have formed a barricade at an intersection leading into the bustling district also known for racy go-go bars.
‘It's worrying, seeing ambulances, people running away. The police and army don't seem to be in control,’ said Herman Koopman, a tourist from the Netherlands.
The blasts were caused by M-79 grenades, Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd told Reuters.
The same type of grenade - fired with a shoulder-mounted launcher - hit troops during a bloody clash with protesters that killed 25 people on 10 April.
Sansern said the grenades seemed to have been fired from the red shirt protest area. Leaders of the red shirts, who have been demonstrating in Bangkok for nearly seven weeks seeking new elections, denied they were responsible.
One explosion hit outside the headquarters of Charoen Pokphand Group, Thailand's biggest agribusiness group. Another landed near the Dusit Thani Hotel.
Nearly a dozen ambulances streamed into the area. Many victims were wounded by shrapnel.
Television footage showed blood splattered across sidewalks, office windows smashed and a chaotic scene as panicked residents carried the injured into ambulances.
After the blasts, troops blocked off roads with razor wire and trained their guns in the air looking to rooftops and an overhead railway system.
Not far from the explosions, tens of thousands of red-shirted supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra have fortified their redoubt in a Bangkok commercial district with home-made barricades, expecting the army to evict them any time.
The army earlier on Thursday warned it would forcibly disperse the mostly rural and urban poor protesters who have set up a self-contained village in a roughly 3 square-km area of an upscale shopping and hotel area in central Bangkok.
‘Your days are numbered,’ Sansern said earlier today.
