The founder of Thailand's “yellow shirt” protest movement, which was behind the week-long occupation of Bangkok's main airports last year, was shot and wounded on Friday, but a doctor said his life was not in danger. The ambush took place as 61-year-old Sondhi, the leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), was on his way to record a program for his private television station. “At least two attackers followed Sondhi's car, overtook it and sprayed it with about 100 rounds of gunfire from AK-47 and M-16s,” said the police commander, Colonel King Kwaengwisatchaicharn. Sondhi Limthongkul received a bloody head wound but survived after gunmen riddled his car with bullets at a gas station before dawn. “He is safe now and able to talk,” said Dr. Chaiwan Chareonchoktawee, director of Vajira hospital, after Sondhi had an operation to remove bullet fragments and bits of skull bone. Doctors said Sondhi's driver was critically injured with gunshot wounds to his head, chest and arm, while his aide suffered minor injuries. Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the attack was an attempt to create more trouble in Thailand, where protests by the Red Shirts left at least two dead and 123 injured before being shut down by security forces Tuesday. “The act took place while the state of emergency is still in effect. It was an attempt to create unrest,” Panitan said, after the government extended the state of emergency in the capital at a Cabinet meeting. Other leaders of PAD, which was not involved in the political unrest that prompted the state of emergency, told their supporters to remain calm. Sondhi's yellow-shirted PAD is a motley collection of royalists, academics, ex-military people and Bangkok's middle classes united in their loathing of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in a 2006 military coup and lives in self-imposed exile. Thaksin's red-shirted supporters invaded and caused the cancellation of a summit of Asian leaders in Thailand last weekend and then staged protests in Bangkok in which two people were killed before being ended on Tuesday. Suriyasai Katasila, spokesman for the PAD, refused to blame the Red Shirts for the attack and suggested it had been an organized hit. “The operation was quite daring by people who are not afraid of the law.... I suspect the situation may be more complicated than we think,” he said. PAD leaders denounced the failure of the security services to prevent the attack on Sondhi.
