Thai opposition protesters have cut the electricity supply to the national police headquarters, a senior officer says, ignoring a plea from Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to end their rallies.
"Protesters cut the power supply to the National Police Headquarters. Now we are running on a generator," Police Lieutenant General Prawut Thavornsiri told AFP on Thursday.
A hospital next to the police headquarters in central Bangkok denied reports it had also been affected.
"As of now the Police General Hospital is not affected by the power cut because it uses a different power line than the headquarters. Only the forensic department is affected," said hospital director Jongjet Aojenpong.
The demonstrations are the biggest since mass rallies three years ago, which descended into the kingdom's worst civil strife in decades with more than 90 people killed and nearly 1900 wounded.
Yingluck easily survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote on Thursday and urged protesters to end their occupation or blockade of several government ministries.
Her coalition government, led by her Pheu Thai party, controls about 60 per cent of the seats in Parliament, so the outcome of the debate and vote came as no surprise.
But the administration still faces a credibility crisis on the streets of Bangkok, where mass protests have been staged this week, with protesters occupying key ministries.
"I am determined to co-operate to find a way out for the country," Yingluck said in a brief televised statement, calling for an end to the protests that have rocked Bangkok this month.
"The government is prepared to listen any proposal of any group, excepting the one asking to set up a People's Assembly, which is something that goes against our constitution," Yingluck said.
Establishing a People's Assembly is one of the key demands of the protests led by several groups opposed to the ongoing political influence of Thaksin, seen as the de facto leader of the Pheu Thai Party.
The assembly, as proposed by protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, would be an appointed rather than elected body established for a short period to draft important political reforms on such issues as vote buying.
The current crop of protests broke out earlier this month when the Pheu Thai party on November 1 pushed an amnesty bill through parliament that would have pardoned Thaksin of his abuse-of-power conviction, and thousands of other politics-related cases committed from 2004 to this year.
On November 11, the Senate rejected the bill, and Yingluck has vowed not to revive it.
Despite the legislative backtracking, the protests have persisted all month, led primarily by Suthep, a former Democrat Party MP who has vowed to "uproot the Thaksin regime".
He has said he wants to rid Thai politics of the influence of Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon turned populist politician who was premier between 2001 and 2006 before being toppled by a coup.
He is currently living abroad to avoid the two-year sentence for his conviction.
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