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Troops and police were sent to guard vital sluice gates and dykes in flooded parts of the Thai capital as tempers flared among residents who believe their homes have been sacrificed to the deluge to spare glitzy neighbourhoods of central Bangkok.
Riot police standby at a site where a flood barrier has been destroyed by villagers to let water through Photo: REUTERS
12:20PM GMT 31 Oct 2011
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Anger boiled over in the north-eastern Khlong Sam Wa district when 300 protesters blocked roads to demand sluice gates be opened wider to allow waters to drain away. Officials from the metropolitan authority locked arms to hold back the mob.
In Pathum Thani province just to the north of Bangkok, 30 police were deployed to prevent residents tearing down a dyke, while in the city's northern Don Muang district in scores of people dismantled a sandbag barrier to allow water to flow away.
Fifteen of the 12 million-strong city's 50 districts, mainly in the north and the west, have been hit by flooding. Six have suffered such widespread inundation for almost a week that Bangkok governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra was forced to issue evacuation orders.
The mounting tensions with the authorities led prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to attempt to defuse the anger on her Facebook page. "The government is concerned about every individual who has faced flooding, as well as those facing lengthy periods of floods," she wrote.
"The government has emphasised with the provincial governors to exhaustively take care of the people." She also said she hoped the drainage of flood waters from the north through Bangkok's canals and rivers to the Gulf of Thailand could be speeded up now that exceptionally high tides have receded.
