Thai protest leader stable after shooting (update)

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai protest leader shot by assailants after days of rioting in the capital is in stable condition and recovering rapidly, doctors said Saturday.

The brazen attack on Sondhi Limthongkul, leader of the "yellow-shirt" movement that helped topple Thailand's government three years ago, has raised political temperatures that had started to cool after rioting by rival "red-shirt" protesters was quelled earlier in the week.

Dr. Thirapong Chaorenwit, acting director at Chulalongkorn Hospital, said Sondhi, who had bullet shards removed from his head, would need a few more days to recuperate and then another week of rest before he can head home.

"He now can sit, walk and eat normally," Thirapong said. An aide who was hit in Friday's pre-dawn attack on Sondhi's car was also improving, though the driver was still in serious condition, he said.



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1. PAD leaders do not think that it was carried out by "red shirt" civilians

but by military sympathizers of ousted Prime Minister Taksin.

The attack ended almost three days of relative calm in Bangkok after a violent street uprising by United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) "red-shirts", which Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva controlled with army forces after declaring a state of emergency on Sunday.

Leaders of the UDD, supporters of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose outspoken enemy the 61-year-old Mr Sondhi became in 2004, are in custody or in hiding.

However, a PAD leadership colleague last night suggested UDD leaders were to blame for the 5.30am attack near Mr Sondhi's ASTV satellite television headquarters.

On a PAD radio station, Pipop Thongchai blamed "Thaksin's lieutenants, who could not accept defeat after their setbacks".

Police said more than 80 shell cases from military-type automatic weapons had been recovered from the scene.





Almost universally Thais will see Sondhi's miraculous survival as a sign that Taksin has begun a period of extremely bad fortune, that Karma intervened.