TNA and BANGKOK POST
Calm descended on inner Bangkok yesterday after the street violence that claimed two lives and left hundreds injured on Tuesday.
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| Pibhop: Not to blame |
As police and demonstrators kept their distance from each other, more than 200 workers from the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's (BMA) Public Works Department moved in to clean up the rubbish-strewn streets around parliament and the Royal Plaza where the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and police clashed.
Bangkok City Clerk Pongsak Semsant inspected the main areas and said a lot of the garbage consisted of plastic water bottles used by PAD demonstrators to wash their faces to ease the effects of tear gas.
Dusit district office had been instructed to assign about 200 workers to quickly remove the mountains of rubbish. Mr Pongsak said staff worked fast but cautiously as two bombs were found at the front gate of the parliament. The bombs were disposed of by the bomb squad.
Reporters said the odour of tear gas hung in the air around the parliament and surrounding streets, providing another problem for the clean-up staff.
Throughout Tuesday night and into yesterday morning, groups of PAD supporters roamed the streets, but most retreated to the compound of Government House.
Leaders of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) said they could not foresee further violence and therefore were not taking protesters away from the protest site.
Pibhop Dhongchai, a core PAD leader, said after the police launched their surprise tear gas attack on Tuesday morning, the group's coordinators held an urgent meeting to consider the safety of their supporters and evaluate the worsening situation.
"We didn't think the police would launch more tear gas attacks after acknowledging their first effort had injured many of our supporters," he said.
So they did not ask the supporters to leave the demonstration site but urged them to prevent lawmakers from entering the compound, he said.
"We were prepared to stay calm, expecting the police would not need to disperse the crowd to make way for the lawmakers," he said.
Still, Mr Pibhob said the PAD leaders should not take the blame for leading their supporters to parliament and subsequent death and injury.
It was the police and politicians who were at fault, he said.
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