BANGKOK: A Thai protester was killed and four wounded yesterday, an emergency official said, when an unidentified gunman opened fire on demonstrators whose efforts to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra have flared into violence in recent days.
The shooting came 48 hours after clashes between police and the protesters, who are determined to disrupt a snap February 2 election called by Yingluck, outside a voting registration centre in which two people were killed and scores wounded.
The violence is the latest in years of rivalry between Bangkok’s middle class and royalist establishment and the mostly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former premier who was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and lives in self-imposed exile.
Petphong Kamjonkitkarn, director of the Erawan Emergency Centre in the capital, Bangkok, said one man in his 30s had been shot dead. Four suffered gunshot wounds.
Reuters
