Thai govt extends Bangkok curfew

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MOULVIBAZAR: This hapless boy, unaware of a train coming, is sitting on the rail track at Srimangal rail station. The picture speaks of the slackened security even at a place so close to the station. — Banglar Chokh

Thailand has extended a curfew in Bangkok for three more nights as troops rooted out small pockets of resistance and residents attempted a return to normal life following yesterday's assault on anti-government protesters, reports BBC.
Bangkok has mostly fallen quiet after a night of rioting, sporadic fighting and fires sparked by the army push to clear the encampment that had been occupied by thousands of anti-government protesters for six weeks.
Armed redshirt protesters who had fled to temple near the encampment offered intermittent resistance overnight to troops outside, but hundreds of people who had taken refuge in the building were eventually coaxed out by police with loudspeakers.
Six bodies were later found inside, bringing yesterday's death toll to at least 14. A government spokesman described the standoff as an operation organised by terrorists.
Bangkok residents woke this morning to find the streets still ablaze, with dozens of fires still smouldering around the city. Central World, south-east Asia's second-biggest department store, was almost totally destroyed in yesterday's violence, its windows shattered and many of its steel beams collapsed.
The protesters' tented encampment in the heart of Bangkok's commercial district - an area lined with luxury hotels and shopping plazas - was patrolled by troops this morning and strewn with rubbish and clothing.
A single redshirt flag in the rubble flew limply in the breeze until it was crushed by a bulldozer.
Television channels have been ordered to only air sanctioned programmes, broadcasting images of bulldozers pushing aside tyre and bamboo barricades as workers in trucks, under the protection of troops, clean up the protest camp site.
The unrest has severely hit Thailand's tourism industry, a key employment sector. Passengers at the main Bangkok airport have been halved to 60,000-70,000 daily and daily flights have been cut to 600 from 750, the state Thai News agency reported. One of the fires also badly damaged the stock exchange.
The market will be closed today and tomorrow and the Bank of Thailand said banks around the country would also stay shut. The whole week has been declared a public holiday in an effort to keep people out of central Bangkok.
Authorities imposed the curfew across a third of Thailand after outbursts of unrest in seven regions, particularly in the north, a redshirt stronghold. Town halls were set ablaze in three northern areas.
Yesterday's surrender of key redshirt leaders - and an apparent end for now to the violence that has killed at least 50 people and wounded nearly 400 in six days - could put the focus back on early elections and the "reconciliation roadmap" the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, had proposed before the unrest.