BANGKOK (REUTERS) - Thai police fired teargas at anti-government protesters trying to force their way into a police compound housing a government security group on Friday, a Reuters witness said.

Police fired about seven teargas canisters at hundreds of protesters massed outside the compound on a main road in the north of Bangkok where the government's Centre for the Administration of Peace and Order is based.

Many of the protesters, who are trying to bring down the country's caretaker government, then withdrew.