BANGKOK, May 15 Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva vowed on Saturday to stop anti-government “Red Shirt” protesters from toppling his government as fighting in Bangkok spiralled into chaotic urban warfare, with both sides calling for reinforcements.

Soldiers fired live rounds at demonstrators who fought back with petrol bombs, rocks and crude homemade rockets in two major areas of the city as the army tried to enforce a security cordon around a sprawling protest encampment in central Bangkok.

“We will not retreat,” Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a televised statement. “We cannot allow the country to be in a condition in which people can establish an armed group to topple the government that they are not happy with.”

The protesters accuse Abhisit and his royalist urban elite of running the country with impunity by meddling in the judicial system and toppling elected governments.

The protesters, who broadly support former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, set fire to vehicles and hurled rocks at troops who set up razor wire across deserted roads in the business district and fired back.

By nightfall, at least 2,000 protesters had massed around an intersection in the working-class Klong Toey district, using a truck as a makeshift stage for protest leaders, in a possible move towards setting up a separate sit-in site.

Witnesses described the fighting as one-sided, as troops armed with automatic rifles easily dodged projectiles and opened fire. Soldiers can shoot if protesters come within 36 metres, said an army spokesman, adding more soldiers were needed to establish control.

The Public Health Ministry said at least 24 people had been killed and 179 wounded since fighting began on Thursday night with the shooting of a renegade general allied with the Red Shirt protesters. The toll was expected to rise sharply, as fighting continued in two areas of the city of 15 million people. Power has been cut in those areas.—Reuters