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BANGKOK : Anti-government Thai protesters scuffled with riot police in Bangkok's tourist district on Tuesday, while a grenade exploded outside the ruling party's offices, fanning tensions in the capital.
The red-shirted supporters of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra threw plastic bottles and pushed against police barricades, paralysing Bangkok's shopping and hotel district for a fourth day in a bid to topple the government.
"We are ready to fight and die here," Red Shirt leader Nattawut Saikuar said.
"The government put pressure on us but we are staying put. Now we will retaliate with our own offensive," he said, vowing to "break every checkpoint" in the capital.
A grenade exploded outside Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's party headquarters, slightly injuring two policemen, in the latest unexplained attack since the rallies began in mid-March. Abhisit was not present at the time.
Processions of red-shirted protesters on motorcycles and in pick-up trucks swarmed the streets of central Bangkok, pouring into the business district from their rally base in the tourist heartland.
The Reds, mostly from the rural poor north, want snap elections, arguing that Abhisit's government is illegitimate because it came to power through a parliamentary vote in 2008 after a court stripped Thaksin's allies of power.
"We will not end our demand for house dissolution. I'm not afraid of being arrested," said Noolah Ungpao, a 50-year-old farmer from the country's northeast.
Riot police earlier surrounded tens of thousands of protesters who have been rallying in the city's commercial centre since Saturday.
But the authorities reassured the public that they were not planning to crack down on the demonstrators, and later called off the police.
Abhisit, in a nationally televised press conference, said the security forces had attempted to restore order but later withdrew to avert confrontation because of the large number of protesters.
He pledged "to enforce the law and restore normalcy as soon as possible".
The protests, which drew tens of thousands of people, were largely peaceful with both sides saying they wanted to avoid violence.
There were no reports of injuries during the scuffles and tourists seemed mostly unperturbed.
"Our plans have been disrupted for the past three days but I enjoy taking pictures of them," Mario Taramidis, a 44-year-old dentist from Cyprus, said of the demonstrators.
"We have no right to be annoyed. We're just here for a few days. It's their lives. They have to do what they want to do," he added.
The military has mounted a heavy security response, deploying 50,000 personnel at one point to try to contain the protests, which drew as many as 100,000 people on the first day on March 14.
The Reds' gathering in the tourist hub has been banned under a strict security law that could land the protesters with a year in jail.
But the government wants to avoid a repeat of last April's clashes with Red Shirts that left two people dead, six months after riot police took on the rival Yellow Shirts in bloody scenes outside parliament.
Thai society is deeply divided between the Reds, who accuse Abhisit's government of being elitist and army-backed, and the Yellow Shirts, supporters of the country's establishment who accuse Thaksin of gross corruption.
Thaksin, a billionaire former telecoms tycoon, lives abroad to avoid a jail term for graft at home.
Abhisit said that if the situation did not improve, he might cancel a trip to Washington for a nuclear security summit on April 12-13 and curtail his planned attendance at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders in Hanoi this week. - AFP/yb/ms
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