Stacy Summary: Tony Joh who runs Thai-Faq.com films from the heart of the confrontation in Bangkok. Here is another video, but warning VERY, VERY graphic and disturbing images, so please do not click on link if you do not like seeing blood.

• The Economist on Who is Who in the Thai unrest

The protesters, many from the poor north-east of Thailand, regard Mr Abhisit’s government as an illegitimate front for a commercial, aristocratic and military elite that has repeatedly refused to accept the electoral decision of the people. It took power in December 2008 by cobbling together a parliamentary majority. Protests by yellow-shirted “royalists” and court rulings had toppled an elected government loyal to Mr Thaksin.

Mr Abhisit has said he might dissolve parliament in December (a year before he has to), but not earlier. Now he faces criticism from some of his own middle-class supporters. His failure to keep the shopping malls open riles an elite contemptuous of the red shirts, whom they regard as an uneducated rabble paid by Mr Thaksin to stir up trouble. After the emergency decree, red shirts claimed that soldiers were massing in a skyscraper overlooking their demonstration, and at Bangkok’s international airport.