Protesters dragged away the bodies of three people from sidewalks – shot by army snipers, they claim – as soldiers blocked major roads and pinned up notices of a "Live Firing Zone."
"I insist that what we are doing is necessary," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a defiant broadcast on national television, making it clear he would not compromise. "The government must move forward. We cannot retreat because we are doing things that will benefit the entire country."
On Saturday, the protesters launched a steady stream of rudimentary missiles at troops who fired back with live ammunition in several areas around a key commercial district of Bangkok.
Army snipers were perched with high-powered rifles atop tall buildings, viewing the action below through telescopic sights. Thick black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by demonstrators as gunfire rang out.
The spiraling violence has raised concerns of sustained, widespread chaos in Thailand – a key U.S. ally and Southeast Asia's most popular tourist destination that promotes its easygoing culture as the "Land of Smiles."
"The situation right now is getting close to a civil war each minute," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader, told reporters. "Please don't ask us how we are going to end this situation, because we are the ones being killed."
Since Thursday, the once-bustling commercial and shopping district has become a war zone with Red Shirt protesters firing weapons, throwing homemade explosives, and hurling rocks at troops firing live ammunition and rubber bullets.
The violence ignited after the army started forming a cordon around the protesters' encampment and a sniper shot and gravely wounded a rogue general reputed to be the Red Shirts' military adviser.
At least 24 people have been killed and more than 194 wounded since Thursday. Previous violence since the protest began in mid-March caused 29 deaths and injured 1,640.
The protesters have occupied a tire-and-bamboo-spike barricaded, 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) zone in one of the capital's ritziest areas, Rajprasong, for about two months to push their demands for Abhisit to resign immediately, dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
The Red Shirts, drawn mostly from the rural and urban poor, say Abhisit's coalition government came to power through manipulation of the courts and the backing of the powerful military, and that it symbolizes a national elite indifferent to the poor.
On Saturday, soldiers unrolled razor wire across roads leading to Ratchaprarop – a commercial district north of the main protest site – area and pinned up Thai and English-language notices saying "Live Firing Zone" and "Restricted Area. No Entry."
The Red Shirts especially despise the military, which had forced Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist premier favored by the Red Shirts, from office in a 2006 coup. Two subsequent pro-Thaksin
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