Protesters lay siege to Thai television station

Dozens of masked, anti-government protesters armed with knives and guns storm a Bangkok TV station.

Anti-government protesters hold a placard of the former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra and his wife Pojamarn Shinawatra outside studio of NBT Television, in Bangkok.

Dozens of masked, anti-government protesters armed with knives, guns and golf clubs stormed a TV station and briefly shut it down today, while tens of thousands peacefully laid siege to government ministries. The massive protests sparked rumours of another coup only eight months after a democratically elected government returned to power, and the country's stock market was down 1.7 per cent by midmorning.

However, top military officials assured the public they would not launch a coup, as they did in response to large anti-government protests in 2006. Members of the People's Alliance for Democracy stormed the government-controlled National Broadcasting Services of Thailand or NBT studios in the Thai capital early today, forcing it to shut down for a few hours before police arrested as many as 80 protesters for trespassing, the broadcaster said.

A second group of several hundred protesters broke through police lines two hours later, rampaging through the NBT offices. They remained inside the television station at midday, forcing the station to broadcast from mobile locations. Outside the office, several thousand more activists, some waving Thai flags and many wearing yellow shirts honouring the monarchy, peacefully listened to speeches criticising the government.

As many as 30,000 more PAD supporters were peacefully protesting outside the gates of four government ministries and the main Government House, preventing employees from entering, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to a reporter. Protest leaders claimed several hundred thousand people were on the streets of Bangkok. "We are now controlling most of the key government offices to prevent them from coming to work," said Sondhi Limthongkul, a co-leader of the Alliance. "Today, we declare a long, long holiday for the government."

Outside of Bangkok, protesters said they had blocked three main highways leading into the capital. The protests were the latest effort by the Alliance to force the prime minister, Samak Sundaravej's, government from office. The Alliance contends Mr Samak is a proxy for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in the 2006 coup and has sought self-imposed exile in England. *AFP