TIMELINE - More unrest in Thailand as coup anniversary nears

(Reuters) - Thousands of royalist protesters stormed Thai state broadcaster NBT and the official compound of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Tuesday in a bid to topple his elected seven-month-old coalition government.

Samak, accused by opponents of being a proxy for ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said his interior minister would take direct control of the police to restore order.

With the second anniversary of the September 19, 2006 coup against Thaksin three weeks away, the military said it would not intervene.

Here is a chronology charting the political turmoil that has dogged the Southeast Asian country.

-- 2005

* September: Sondhi Limthongkul, a disgruntled former business associate, starts the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a street campaign dedicated to ousting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Sondhi argues that Thaksin's huge parliamentary majority has made him corrupt.

-- 2006

* April 2: Thaksin wins a snap election designed to silence Sondhi's increasingly biting criticism, but the victory is undermined by an opposition boycott that renders the result void. Judges annul the entire poll a few weeks later.

* September 19: Military stages coup while Thaksin is at U.N. headquarters in New York. He retreats into exile in London.