Anti-government protesters in Bangkok have been ordered to leave their fortified camp in the Thai capital.

Loudspeakers, TV announcements and mobile phone messages were used to warn the protesters they should leave by 1500 (0800 GMT).

Few protesters appear to be heeding the call and it remains unclear what may happen next - as soldiers shoot live rounds to try to contain the protest.

Violence since Thursday has left 36 dead, and some 250 injured.

Renegade Thai general Khattiya Sawasdipol died on Monday, five days after being shot as he spoke to reporters about his backing for the protest movement.

The government said on Monday it would talk to the protesters as long as they showed "sincerity" by leaving their camp.

The protest leaders, for their part, have offered UN-mediated talks on condition the government pulls back its troops.

Mistrust

The protesters - particularly women, children and the elderly - have been told by the government they must leave the area immediately as it is too dangerous to remain.

The broadcasts warned that those who remained faced two years in prison.

Satit Wonghnongtaey, a minister attached to the prime minister's office, said the government would continue its operation "to tighten the seal around the protest area".

"We would like to urge fellow citizens to be careful and protect themselves," he said.

But the protesters appear to be defiant.

The BBC's Rachel Harvey, in the protesters' camp, said that as the deadline passed speeches were still being given and people - the majority of them women - were clapping and cheering them on.

A group of more than 300 people who sought refuge in a nearby temple have told volunteers there that they do not trust the government's offer of safe passage and do not dare to leave, the BBC was told.

Containment by fire

The BBC's Chris Hogg is out on the streets of Bangkok and says the situation remains very tense.

He says Thai soldiers are pursuing a policy of containment by fire, shooting live rounds towards the encampment in an effort to keep protesters at a safe distance from them.

About 5,000 people are believed to remain in the Ratchaprasong encampment, where food and water are running low.

There was fresh fighting along a street of upmarket hotels overnight, which saw the first death among the soldiers.

Guests at one of the hotels, the Dusit Thani, were rushed from their rooms into the building's basement after gunfire and explosions shook the area.

A state of emergency has now been declared in 22 provinces across the country - mostly in the protesters' northern heartlands - in a bid to stop more demonstrators heading to the capital.

Protests have spread outside the capital with a military bus set afire in the northern city of Chiang Mai and demonstrations in two north-eastern towns in defiance of a government ban.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has declared Monday and Tuesday as public holidays and delayed the start of Bangkok's school term, but a planned curfew was cancelled.

Many of the protesters, called red-shirts after the colour they have adopted, are from poor rural areas in northern Thailand where support is still strong for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.

He is living abroad to avoid a jail term on a corruption conviction.

The protesters say the current government is illegitimate, having come to power in a parliamentary vote after a pro-Thaksin government was forced to step down in December 2008 by a Constitutional Court ruling that it had committed electoral fraud.

Story By BBC