A renegade Thai general was shot in Bangkok on Thursday as the military planned to encircle the barricaded encampment of antigovernment demonstrators.
Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol, 59, better known as Seh Daeng, was allied with the protesters. He was struck in the head by a bullet during an interview with this reporter. The Associated Press reached an unidentified aide to the general who described his wound as “severe.”
The general, an incendiary figure who was in charge of security for the protesters, had been called a terrorist by the prime minister, who named him as the chief obstacle to a compromise plan to end a two-month sit-in here in return for an election in November. The latest violence is the most serious since a failed crackdown in April that killed at least 25 people.
Commanding his own paramilitary force of former Rangers, he was suspended without pay from the armed forces. A special committee was considering whether to strip him of his rank.
In an interview on Sunday, he denied being responsible for any violence. “I deny!” he cried in English, with a laugh, when asked about the dozens of bombings that have set Bangkok on edge and about the mysterious black-shirted killers who escalated the violence on April 10 that killed 25 soldiers and civilians. “No one ever saw me.”
A tentative deal had been reached between the protesters and the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, only to fall apart this week.
Witnesses heard a loud blast followed by bursts of automatic gunfire near the heavily guarded Silom area, which is close to the protesters’ encampment, The Associated Press reported.
Thomas Fuller @'NY Times'
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