24/02/2014 10:22
Thailand protests targeted; 4 dead, dozens wounded
Thailand's prime minister on Sunday condemned weekend attacks on her opponents that killed four people -- three of them children -- and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, CNN reported.
A 6-year-old-girl, a 4-year-old boy and a woman of about 40 died when a bomb exploded at an anti-government rally outside a shopping mall in the Ratchaprasong area of Bangkok, the Erawan Emergency Center reported. The children were siblings.
The 22 wounded included a preteen boy who was in critical condition, said Lt. Gen. Paradon Patthanathabut, Thailand's national security chief.
On Saturday night, a 5-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet when attackers opened fire on an anti-government demonstration in eastern Trat province, police Col. Jirawut Tantasri said. Another 34 were wounded, he said.
The deaths were the latest to punctuate three months of protests against the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. In a statement issued Sunday night, Yingluck said her government "will not tolerate terrorism" and would prosecute the killers "without exception."
"I would like to ask all sides of the political divide that we may see things differently and there are many ways to express those differences," Yingluck said. "But the use of violence that lead to deaths are not the civilized way of the living."
Both the Ratchaprasong and Trat demonstrations were organized by the opposition People's Democratic Reform Committee, which vowed to continue protests despite the attacks.