Thailand protests: Toll rises as six found dead in temple refuge

Military says it has retaken Bangkok but extends city curfew, while state of emergency declared across 23 provinces
Bangkok riots temple deadd
The bodies of six redshirt protesters killed overnight are laid out in the temple grounds. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

With an uneasy peace holding in Bangkok , the death toll from the violent army crackdown has reached 14 today when the bodies of six protesters were found inside a temple designated as a refuge for women and children.

The military declared that it had retaken control of central Bangkok but a city-wide curfew was extended for another three days. The government declared a state of emergency across 23 provinces, mainly in the north of the country, which is an anti-government redshirt stronghold.

The discovery of the bodies took to 82 the total number of deaths during two months of clashes between government troops and protesters.

The redshirts' fortified protest camp in central Bangkok was stormed by troops early on Wednesday. Demonstrators had occupied some 300 hectares (740 acres) of the capital for more than a month.

Sporadic gunfire between troops and protesters continued today as firefighters tacked the smouldering aftermath of more than 30 fires started by fleeing red-shirts.

As troops continued to sweep the city on Wednesday morning, more than 1,000 redshirt supporters were discovered hiding inside the protest area, too frightened to come out and distrusting of a government offer to take them home.

At the Pathuwanaram temple inside the redshirt zone, designated a refuge for those who wished to leave the protest peacefully, hundreds of demonstrators, mainly women and children, were reluctant to trust police or military offers of safe passage.

The bodies of six protesters shot by troops were found inside the temple grounds. They had been shot in fierce fighting at the front gates.

One woman, Nomfan, said she had spent four days in the temple, unable to leave the area before troops moved in. She said that while gun battles raged at the front gates on Wednesday, she feared troops would storm the temple. "People came in bleeding yesterday. They had been shot and they died. The shooting was just outside. We were too scared soldiers would shoot us too."

Protesters sheltering in the temple were coaxed to a nearby police station, and put on buses to their homes across the country.

Just down the road, the Guardian found a group of more than 100 redshirt supporters, including several children, who had spent the night hiding in an underground carpark behind the Erawan hotel. Even after the fighting subsided they had been too frightened to walk the 80 metres to the temple. They were only willing to make the short journey in the presence of western journalists.

"We cannot come out [by] ourselves, [the] soldiers would shoot us," Mayaree, a redshirt supporter from Ayutthaya, said as she led fellow redshirts from the protest site. "We do not trust the government, they tell the soldiers to kill redshirts."

Unrest continues elsewhere, with redshirt rallies across the country. Town halls in the north have been seized and burned, and redshirt sympathisers and police clashed during riots in Chiang Mai.

Today's best video

Today in pictures