As election sites and polling booths were set to open to voters, clashes among anti-government protesters, riot police and Thai citizens who wanted to keep their right to vote turned the streets of Bangkok into a warzone with flying bullets, the Associated Press reported.
Bangkok city emergency services reported at least six people died during the confrontation which sent people into nearby malls in search of safety as guns shot from opposite sides of the confrontation, according to the AP.
The gunfire lasted an hour and masked men with armored vests could be seen laying on the floor under a highway overpass and on top of the mall roof aiming down and shooting, the AP reported.
The protests began in 2013 after Yingluck attempted to slide an amnesty bill for her brother, and former prime minister who is currently in exile for corruption, Thaksin, the AP reported. Protests ensued and Yingluck became desperate to defuse the conflict announced new elections, which protesters do not want.
Tensions between protesters and police have risen in the past month as anti-government demonstrators demand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra step down and allow an elected council, but she has refused and said such a council would be unconstitutional, according to the AP.
Senior researcher for the Human Rights Watch Sunai Phasuk said pro-government supporters yielding guns had climbed to the mall's roof and began firing down at anti-government protesters, the AP reported.
"What is clear is that both sides had weapons, both sides were armed," Sunai told the AP. "This is a very worrying sign."
Protesters who want Yingluck to step down blocked ballot boxes inside a district office from being delivered to polling stations nearby needed for Sunday's elections, the AP reported. Now, Thai citizens who just want to keep their right to vote have also become part of the clashes.
"How did we get to this point?" Chanida Pakdee Banchasak, a 28-year-old Bangkok resident who wanted to cast her vote on Sunday asked, according to the AP. "Since when does going to vote mean you don't love the country?"
Now, after failed attempts at calming the conflict failed, analysts are expecting a "judicial coup" due to the Thai court's dislike of Shinawatra, the AP reported. Yingluck opponents have begun brainstorming ways to nullify Sunday's votes.
"I think probably we are moving toward a judicial coup of some sort," Chris Baker, a Bangkok-based political analyst and writer told the AP. "I think we are moving toward a position in which some part of the judicial machinery, be it the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Constitutional Court, some combination of this, will somehow bring down this government."
