Afternoon:
10°c
Mob will leave tomorrow but no flights until Friday
2 Dec 2008The protesters besieging Bangkok's two airports will leave tomorrow, their leader said today.
People's Alliance for Democracy leader Sondhi Limthongkul said the protesters who have been camped at Suvarnabhumi international airport and at the domestic Don Muang airport will leave by the morning.
But a government official said the first flights out of Suvarnabhumi, to Rome and Sydney, would not leave until Friday.
Thousands of Britons were among the estimated 300,000 stranded travellers. A few managed to get away today, with Foreign Secretary David Miliband saying that they were on special flights laid on by Qantas and Emirates, among others.
One of the stranded Britons is advertising agency worker Nadine Howard, from Hampstead, who is stuck in the resort of Phuket at the end of a two-week holiday with her boyfriend.
Her father Philip Howard said today: “Nadine told me of a military airfield where thousands of people were waiting for flights. Locals told her not to go there as fights have broken out. Apparently the place is like a refugee camp.”
A grenade was fired from an adjoining flyover into a crowd of activists at Don Muang airport last night, killing one person and wounding 22 others. Seven people have been killed and scores injured in bomb attacks and street battles between government opponents and supporters.
