Thai protesters blame government for grenade attack

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The leader of a long-running anti-government street movement in Thailand called for a major rally on Sunday to oust the "murderous" administration after one of its supporters was killed in a grenade attack.

Sondhi Limthongkul accused the government of having a hand in the firing of the bomb in the early hours of Thursday into the prime minister's official compound, occupied by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) since August.

"The PAD can no longer tolerate this murderous government that kills its people daily and cruelly," he said, reading out a statement on PAD radio and television after an emergency meeting of his inner circle.

Chamlong Srimuang, a retired general and fellow PAD chief, painted the rally as "the last round of the final battle" -- a cry used many times before, most recently in the run-up to bloody clashes with riot police outside parliament on Oct. 7.

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat denied Sondhi's accusation, telling reporters the government had "never had a policy to cause unrest or hurt any Thai".

Besides the dead man, identified as a 48-year-old with shrapnel wounds to the chest, 23 people were hurt in the blast, the most serious in a series of small attacks against the PAD sit-in in the last few weeks.

The PAD, a loose coalition of royalist businessmen and academics who accuse the government of being a puppet of ousted leader Thaksin Shinawatra, have managed to muster crowds in the tens of thousands this year.

However, in the last few weeks the crowds at Government House have been dwindling, largely through fatigue and the absence of anything too inflammatory from the government, which is operating out of temporary offices at an old airport.