WebSTAT service provider Truthit reported the 429-per-cent surge of online visits to locally hosted websites between midnight on Tuesday and 10am.

The popular discussion board "The Ratchadamnoen Room" on the Pantip.com website, where political topics are hotly debated, has been temporarily closed by the Information and Communications Technology Ministry on the orders of the Administrative Reform Council (ARC), which staged the coup.

Many websites set up special webpages to provide news reports about the coup and publish the ARC's orders. However, all of them excluded discussion forums for visitors' opinions of the coup, saying it was still not the right time to allow sensitive topics on the situation to be discussed freely.

The Nation's website, nationmultimedia.com, which usually receives about 70,000 hits per day, received a 459,000 hits yesterday.

The pro-Thaksin Shinawatra website, www.rakmuangthai.org, broadcast a brief TV bulletin on Channel 9 on Tuesday night detailing Thaksin's announcement made from New York, but contained none of ARC's orders or details on its movements.

Meanwhile, Hunsa.com, mThai.com and Kapook.com, which are popular among both general and teenage netizens, created special webpages con-taining news developments of the coup and two-sided and impartial information.