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Thai Government Takes Harder Stance as Clashes Continue

Antigovernment protesters in Bangkok created a burning barricade on Saturday to try to stop Thai Army soldiers from advancing.Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters

BANGKOK — The Thai government struck a combative tone on Saturday, saying it would continue its efforts to cut off antigovernment protesters from the rest of the city despite a rising death toll and determined resistance from the demonstrators.

Throughout the day and into the night, gunfire and explosions shook neighborhoods in central Bangkok that ring the one-mile area where the protesters have camped for weeks in an attempt to bring down the government. The government reported that 8 people were killed Saturday, bringing the death toll from three days of clashes to 24, with 198 people injured.

“The government cannot turn back,” Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, said in a nationally televised address on Saturday night.

“Ending the rally is the only way to prevent calamity.”

Shortly before the prime minister spoke, leaders of the country’s powerful military appeared on television in what may have been a deliberate show of unity for an army notorious for its divisions and intrigue. Unlike last month, when the government withdrew after a failed crackdown that left 25 people dead, the military said losses were unavoidable, and began calling in reinforcements, adding to the thousands of troops already here.

With both the government and at least some protesters appearing to take a harder stance, fears were rising that the violence could spill out to other parts of the city.

On Sunday, Mr. Abhisit said his government was considering imposing a curfew in Bangkok, along with other measures, Reuters reported.

Already on Saturday, many streets near the center of the capital were deserted and some residents woke to find their neighborhoods suddenly within the battle zone near the cordon set up in recent days by the military. In an attempt to keep troops out, some protesters set barricades of tires on fire, sending up tall plumes of smoke.There were many reports of snipers firing at protesters, and as night fell, the government turned off street lights in some neighborhoods, leaving them in near total darkness.

After a night filled with the flash and boom of explosions, of shouts and gunfire in the dark, two huge plumes of black smoke from burning tires rose above the high-rise skyline Sunday morning as if to tell the city’s residents, “We are still here.”

The violence in recent days led the United States government to offer a voluntary evacuation of nonessential personnel in its embassy in Bangkok and to advise against all travel to the Thai capital; it had previously only advised against nonessential travel. Other countries also issued warnings about visiting the city.

Despite the worries that violence would escalate, the government has powerful reasons to show restraint. Officials have held back for weeks for fear of causing a bloodbath — further tarnishing Thailand’s reputation as a business and tourist-friendly country — or of inciting unrest in other parts of the country sympathetic to the protesters.

Rather than forcing a showdown, the military could instead choose to continue to try to divide the demonstrators, hoping that more moderate members will leave the area as they run out of food and water. Over the last several days, the military has set up checkpoints on roads leading to the protesters’ encampment, keeping supporters with new supplies out and checking the identity of anyone trying to enter the area.

Sudsanguan Suthisorn, an associate professor of criminology at Thammasat University and a member of the protest movement, said that only limited supplies of food and water remained in the cordoned-off area and that with municipal power cut off, fuel was running low for generators.

The protesters, who began their demonstration here two months ago, have demanded the resignation of the government and new elections. But the movement — made up of farmers and the urban poor, many of them supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister deposed in a 2006 military coup — has fractured and its demands are now unclear.

In his television appearance on Saturday, Mr. Abhisit tried to explain the government’s tougher stance, saying that he feared armed groups, which he said were siding with the demonstrators, could overthrow the government. “We cannot let the country remain in this condition, where people do not respect the law,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Dowpong Rattanasuwan, the deputy chief of the army, said Saturday that “forces with weapons are hiding among the protesters” and that soldiers had been authorized to use their weapons in self-defense.

Inside the protesters’ barricaded encampment the crowds were thinner and more subdued than they had been before the clashes began Thursday. Under rows of tents and in a plaza in front of a sound stage, plastic chairs stood empty, and protest leaders did not offer their accustomed rousing speeches from the stage.

At a small news conference, one of the leaders, Nattawut Saikua, asserted that it was no longer possible to control some of the protesters.

Among the casualties of three days of clashes was an emergency medical technician who was riding a motorcycle when he was fatally wounded and four journalists, all of whom were wounded but survived.

One photographer reported seeing two dead or wounded victims unattended in a street for a long period because of the fear of snipers. The military was not allowing ambulances to pass a roadblock, the photographer said, which meant that rescue workers had to run in a crouch with stretchers to carry out the victims.

In one neighborhood, the military posted a banner declaring a “Live firing zone.” A Thai television station reported that the banner was taken down late in the afternoon.

The violence occurring Saturday is likely to harden divisions between the country’s poor majority, which forms the base of the protest movement, and its elite establishment, which feels threatened and discomfited by the long occupation of the city’s upscale commercial center.

Underlying the protests is a rising awareness among the poor of their rights and a demand for a greater share in the country’s wealth and political voice.

Mr. Thaksin, the deposed prime minister, remains abroad; he is wanted in Thailand on a conviction for corruption. He had mobilized the poor as a political base, and the demand for democracy that is often heard among them now reflects a sense that their vote was stolen from them when he was ousted.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Bangkok in Turmoil as Government Presses End to Protests and Deaths Rise. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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