An explosion wounded a protester in the grounds of the Thai prime minister’s offices in Bangkok yesterday, where anti-government demonstrators have been camped out since August.
A police commander said the volunteer guard at Government House was not seriously injured in the blast, but gave few details as he was not allowed inside the protest compound.
“It’s their own bomb. It exploded inside the tent,” Colonel Somchai Chueyklin said, referring to a tent where the guards were stationed.
Local media reported the guard, Methi U-thong, was taken to a Bangkok hospital with head injuries and chest pain at around 4:20am.
The anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) stormed Government House in late August and have refused to leave since, accusing the government of corruption and demanding it step down.
The bomb is the latest in a series of violent incidents at the camp. On Tuesday a hand grenade was tossed at a group of guards, though nobody was hurt.
But 10 PAD guards were injured last week when another grenade was hurled at the camp, and one man was found shot dead nearby.
The PAD took their protest to parliament on Oct. 7, causing riot police to fire tear gas that led to clashes leaving two dead and nearly 500 injured.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done