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BANGKOK: Anti-government protesters have forced Thai police to abandon vehicles during confontations at Bangkok's airports as fears grow that days of crippling demonstrations will end violently.
Tensions rose further as exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, whom the protesters say is the puppetmaster for the present administration, warned there would be bloodshed if the army tries to stage a coup.
"If we have to die today, I am willing to die. This is a fight for dignity," Sondhi Limthongkul, Thaksin's arch-foe and the founder of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) movement, said on his private television station.
Angry demonstrators argued with police who tried to set up a checkpoint on the road to the main Suvarnabhumi international airport to stop more people flocking to the site on the fifth day of its occupation by protesters.
An AFP correspondent later saw five large police trucks abandoned near a checkpoint in the airport compound with their tyres deflated and no police officers in sight.
Despite Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat's declaration of state of emergency rule at the airports on Wednesday, protesters trying to topple his elected government remain entrenched, barricading themselves in with barbed wire and tyres.
Police said they had given formal warnings overnight to protesters at both the three-billion-dollar Suvarnabhumi, which opened in 2006, and the domestic Don Muang airport, ordering them to leave immediately or face action to evict them.
"Police have already issued two warnings since last night (Friday) to ask them to leave," Major General Piya Sorntrakoon, deputy commander of Thailand's central region, told AFP.
At Suvarnabhumi, demonstrators headed inside as rumours of a police raid circulated. Protesters set up a medical corner to treat the injured if clashes broke out, while water and other supplies were stacked up.
Organisers handed out pieces of cloth bearing Buddhist inscriptions which they said would protect the wearers from harm, while some women carried pink helmets, readying for any action.
Children were also among the crowd.
Jirachaya Suthinun, a 15-year-old secondary school student, said PAD guards had given her a pink helmet when she volunteered to run a checkpoint.
"I'm not afraid because I am not doing it for fun -- I have to fight for the nation," she told AFP.
Suvarnabhumi has been shuttered since late Tuesday. Every day the siege continues, 30,000 more passengers miss flights and the kingdom loses seven million dollars in tourism revenue, ministers and officials have said.
The army chief has said he does not want to remove the protesters for fear of bloody clashes, and on Wednesday urged Somchai to dissolve parliament and hold new elections -- calls the premier promptly rejected.
Somchai on Friday dismissed national police chief General Patcharawat Wongsuwan, as police failed to take action after the emergency rule order.
The protesters say the government is running Thailand on behalf of Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon who was toppled in a coup in 2006 and is in exile to avoid jail terms imposed for corruption.
"If the coup were to happen there will be bloodshed -- it will not be an easy coup like in the past because the people in Thailand, now they are in hardship," Thaksin said in the interview with a US blogger from Hong Kong.
The PAD, a loose coalition with the backing of elements in the military, the palace and the urban middle classes, began its campaign in late May and has called for a "final battle" against the government.
A Thai pro-government group vowed Saturday to hold a rally in central Bangkok on Sunday.
- AFP/yt
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