At least four people have been killed when Thai soldiers stormed into a fortified protest camp in Bangkok, smashing through barricades with armoured vehicles.
Once inside the protest zone, troops fired M-16 rifles at fleeing protesters and shouted: “Come out and surrender or we’ll kill you.”
Sky News’ Ashish Joshi, in Bangkok, said: “I counted the bodies of at least two protesters lying on the ground, shot by snipers, bullet holes in their heads.
“They were not armed, that doesn’t mean they weren’t at the time they were shot but I can’t answer that. But it certainly didn’t look as if they had been armed.”
Witnesses earlier described how one of the men was shot while trying to help a fellow protester.
An AP photographer has reported witnessing three foreign journalists shot during the crackdown and said one of them appeared to be dead.
The Thai government is declaring success in its operation to retake central Bangkok from demonstrators but says the Red Shirt leaders have escaped from the protest zone.
The crackdown began shortly after dawn as troops surrounded the encampment.
After punching a hole in the barricade of rubber tyres and bamboo, armoured personnel carriers entered the protest camp with soldiers following behind.
About 100 soldiers also took up positions along the wall of the central Lumpini Park and trained their guns inside the camp.
Ahead of the assault, troops are said to have fired tear gas as armoured vehicles rolled towards a stage where most of the estimated 3,000 demonstrators were rallying.
Thick black smoke billowed over the skyscrapers in the heart of Bangkok’s commercial district as protesters set light to their barricades of petrol-soaked tyres.
Troops initially used loudspeakers to urge protesters and civilians to leave as military helicopters circled overhead.
“Please leave the site immediately. Officials are about to conduct an operation,” a soldier said over a loudspeaker.
Earlier, government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said on Thai television that the operation will continue throughout the day.
It is intended “to make sure that security officers can provide security and safety to the public at large”, he added.
At least 40 people have been killed and more than 300 people wounded in seven days of clashes in the city.
The military offensive comes a day after the collapse of a proposal for talks aimed at ending five days of street-fighting that has descended into urban warfare.
It is unclear whether the military is launching a long-anticipated operation to evict protesters or trying to first flush out women and children from the sprawling encampment.
