Attack on Bangkok anti-govt rally injures 28

BANGKOK, Jan 19 (AFP): An attack on a rally in central Bangkok injured 28 people Sunday, the second such assault in two days on demonstrators staging "shutdown" protests aimed at toppling the Thai government.
Unknown attackers have killed several people during the months-long demonstrations intended to oust the embattled government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Each side has blamed the other for the violence.
Sunday's attack-twin blasts followed by gunshots at a busy intersection occupied by the protesters-heightened fears of growing violence before elections called by Yingluck for February 2.
A protest leader told reporters "an explosive device" was thrown into a crowd near a tent where he was sitting behind the main rally stage.
The crowd chased "suspects but one of them turned back and threw a second device", said Thavorn Senniem, adding shots were then fired before the attackers escaped on motorcycles.
An AFP reporter saw blood-splattered clothes and a small crater at the scene of one of the blasts.
Twenty-eight injured people were taken to several city hospitals after the attack, a health official said.
"Seven of them are seriously injured... it's likely to be from shrapnel," Suphan Srithamma, the head of the Department of Medical Services, told AFP.
The capital's Erawan emergency centre confirmed the toll.
Joining a march across another part of the city, another protest leader urged supporters not to be cowed by the violence.
"It (the attack) is an outrage. We would like you to come out and join our fight... if we don't fight, we will fall in to become Thaksin's slaves," Akanat Promphan told marchers.
Thailand has been rocked by bouts of bloody unrest since just before a 2006 military coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. He now lives in self-exile overseas to avoid a jail term for corruption.