This will probably be a very fast-moving story for at least several hours now.

At about 7pm tonight, Major-General Khattiya Sawasdipol or ‘Seh Daeng’, as he is known, was hit by one or two bullets. Seh Daeng reportedly suffered a head wound and is in a coma, his breathing mechanically assisted.

Seh Daeng is the long-infamous and outspoken ‘rogue’ army officer who has been overseeing the Red Shirts defensive lines. He is infamous for pronouncements such as claiming to have trained a people’s army that will rise up against any violent military crackdown, as well as for saying his ‘Ronin warriors’ defended Red Shirts from military snipers and killing on 10 April.

Your faithful poster was nearby at the time, positioned on Rama IV Road about 150 meters from the UDD barricade at the Rajdamri/Silom intersection.

There were plenty of bangs and pops going off -almost certainly fireworks. Then, the noises changed. There were two loud, deep booms, followed by five rapid gunshots. My assumption that this was grenade and rifle fire seemed to be proven correct when dozens of pedestrians came running up Rama IV road, away from the Silom intersection. Local food carts hurriedly packed up and began wheeling their businesses in the same direction, towards Suriwong Road. They laughed nervously and muttered something that was no doubt the Thai for “%@$ this nonsense, I’m getting out of Dodge!”

Local shopkeepers hurriedly pulled metal shutters closed, some of them leaning out into the street or standing around, anxiously looking towards the sound of gunfire up the road. Troops at the Suriwong corner looked less than eager to head towards the shooting but a commanding officer was barking orders, to which a few soldiers reluctantly responded. I wished them all good luck.

As I turned the corner into Suriwong, I heard some lighter popping sounds. They sounded to me like small-calibre pistol fire about 50 meters away (which I have experienced) or perhaps the sound of passing rounds (which, until know, I don’t think I have heard).

This initial round of shooting left Seh Daeng in coma at a local hospital and at least one other protester injured. In the following hours, witnesses in the area have been reporting angry crowds, more shooting, soldiers using rubber bullets. At least one more protester has been killed. Reuters (whose Japanese cameraman died in the clashes on 10 April) has reportedly pulled its staff out of the area, saying it’s too dangerous.

The CRES has apparently implemented a curfew in the area around the rally zone as well as announced that anybody who tries to drive in to the rally area faces a two-year prison term. From close friends, I am hearing about entire Thai families they know in Bangkok piling into pickup trucks and heading for the rally. Others tell me that UDD supporters outside Bangkok also want to head for the rally site but the assumption is that they will be blocked by security forces long before they arrive in Bangkok.

The following video is footage of Seh Daeng taken shortly before he was shot.

This video on CNN shows the immediate aftermath, after Seh Daeng was shot. WARNING: This is graphic video. Some viewers may find it upsetting.

The video below is footage of some of the shooting initial the Silom intersection at the time Seh Daeng was shot plus Seh Daeng being wheeled into hospital.

Humphrey Cheung came to Bangkok to kick back a little. Humphrey normally shoots video at technology shows, car shows and air shows but this year, he decided to visit Bangkok.

Humphrey is now the proud owner of a Kevlar helmet, body armour, and some unusual holiday videos. Not a lot of people shoot holiday videos that feature fireworks used against military helicopters performing night-time surveillance or M-16-toting troops at the scenes of drive-by shootings.

In the video below, it’s about 3.30am and a military helicopter swoops over the area of central Bangkok controlled by Red Shirt protesters. Most likely, the helicopter is being used to perform surveillance of the protesters and their defences. Red Shirt guards respond with a volley of firework rockets and a traditional lantern intended to foil the night vision equipment on the helicopter.

Red shirts play real-life missile command against helicopters from Humphrey Cheung on Vimeo.

The next video is taken on Friday night, shortly after a gun attack at 10.45pm that killed one police officer and injured another. Two civilians were also injured in the attack, one shot in the leg and one suffering cuts from broken glass. The dead and injured were in virtually the same place as some of the casualties of the multiple grenade attacks on April 22.

Bangkok protests – Shooting scene Krung Thai bank at Sala Daeng from Humphrey Cheung on Vimeo.

Less than three hours later, a tent housing police on the edge of Lumpini Park, less than one kilometre from this shooting was the target of another attack. Three grenades were fired from M79 launchers. One police officer died and five people – three police officers and two soldiers – were injured.

Be sure to check out Humphrey’s other videos on Vimeo.

As the UDD’s political rally in Bangkok grinds wearily towards its third month, the two (or three, or four…) sides in this increasingly surreal stand-off seem no closer to a mutually-acceptable solution.

The opposing views are hardening. With few exceptions, the language of spokespeople, party rhetoric and domestic media supports polemicists alone. Especially in a culture rooted in the avoidance of direct confrontation, the language of hatred, distrust and self-interest offers little opportunity for meaningful or progressive political discourse. Even a brief sampling of Thailand’s social-media networks reveals the ill-informed, shallow, narrow-minded and pointed views that appear destined to consign recent political rallies and their associated violent horrors to ending up as little more than transient symptoms of a hardier, longer-term set of issues.

On Thursday night, red shirts invaded the grounds of Chulalongkorn Hospital, adjacent to one end of the UDD’s barricaded rally grounds. Protesters suspected troops had secretly been installed on hospital grounds in preparation for a crackdown that has for weeks been rumoured imminent. Whatever the validity of those suspicions, invading a hospital was only ever destined to be a PR disaster for the UDD.

In the wake of this PR self-nuke, senior UDD leaders have been almost totally occupied with trying to repair the heavy damage inflicted on the movement’s image. As a conciliatory gesture, part of one of the infamous tyre-and-bamboo Mad Max barricades was dismantled to clear access to the hospital. Seh Daeng, the UDD’s on-again, off-again security affiliate, then ordered the barricade rebuilt to thwart that ‘imminent’ crackdown. UDD leaders, insisting that orders should come from them, not Seh Daeng, continue to stress that they do not want to cause upset for hospital staff or patients. Some leaders even went so far as to apologize openly for the regrettable move.

But the damage has probably been done. The hospital had already begun to shutter some non-essential services and shift patients out of its most exposed building. Following the invasion, the move turned into what the press eagerly reported as an ‘evacuation’, a stream of ambulances on Friday removing patients to other hospitals. Few news outlets squandered the opportunity to play on emotions with imagery of bed-ridden grannies, toddlers with cancer, and ‘terrified’ nurses. You could almost hear the shrieks of excitement from some journalists.

Eventually, the only patient left in the main building was the Supreme Patriarch, head of Thailand’s order of Buddhist monks. Late yesterday afternoon, HRH Princess Maha Chakri Srindhorn visited the Supreme Patriarch. On her orders, reportedly, he was moved to Siriraj Hospital, where her father HM King Bhumibol has been a patient for several months.

Earlier today, Thailand’s Prime Minister issued what appears to be the strongest statement so far that authorities would clear the Rajprasong area of protesters, warning that the government had “given people enough time to leave”. For many of the Bangkok businesses, workers and residents left increasingly-frustrated by the stress, risk and upheaval the protests have created, a crackdown cannot come soon enough.

But clearing the Rajprasong rally enclave is no simple feat. Apart from the fact that the rally site contains many women and children as well as elderly Thais, the area is ringed by some of Bangkok’s most expensive commercial and residential property.

And then, there is the politics. Not the overt red/yellow politics that has nearly paralysed Thailand for years – this is the internal politics involved in assuring the allegiance of the nation’s top- and mid-level power brokers, should the rumoured crack down become reality.

By all accounts, Thailand is in an extremely perilous state. Many people question the point of a government and Prime Minister that seem so unwilling or unable to restore law and order. There is, however, much evidence to support the thesis that the overall level of tolerance authorities have shown for the rally thus far is a strong indication of the delicate reality of Thai politics and the risks to the country should PM Abhisit Vejjajia and his allies play their cards wrong.

In simple terms, Thailand is now in an extremely dangerous place. None of the many ’solutions’ posited by foreign and domestic observers and academics fully takes into account all of the forces, interests and issues involved. Some foreign proposals have been so shockingly arrogant and ignorant that they would be laughable if 27 people had not already died and the prospect of many more casualties was not so real.

Nurses yesterday paraded through Chulalongkorn Hospital, carrying placards that implore demonstrators to show compassion for staff and patients. Several of the nurses in this video are crying. I strongly suspect the nurses were crying for their country as well as their hospital.

Things look extremely grim for Thailand right now but if any nation can ‘magic’ one out of the hat and find a solution where none seems possible, Thailand is that nation. However quickly and by whatever means this crisis is ended, I sincerely hope this video is the last time we have a real reason to cry about Thai politics.