Hi °C | Lo °C Protesters are to end their blockade of Thailand's airports it was announced today.
The demonstrators will start pulling out of Bangkok’s airports tomorrow morning, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) said.
“The PAD has agreed to cease protesting after a long-running 192-day campaign,” said said founding member Sondhi Limthongkul.
“We have won a victory and achieved our aims.”
Flights out of Suvarnabhumiinternational airport are to restart on December 5 with planes to Rome and Sydney, Thailand's airport authority confirmed.
This will be welcome news for thousands of British tourists who have been stranded in Thailand and faced chaos and confusion as a court earlier today banned the country’s ruling party.
The father of a British tourist stuck in the resort of Phuket said his daughter had earlier told him how fights had broken out among thousands of tourists besieging a military airfield.
Some Britons had been escaping from the strife-torn country on relief flights which were taking them to London via Hong Kong, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur.
But many were facing a battle to get away, with the UK not actually laying on any extra flights but merely liaising with foreign airlines to get as many Britons away as possible.
Anti-government protesters had sparked the travel chaos in Thailand by occupying and forcing the closure of the main Bangkok international airport.
Earlier today, Thailand’s Constitutional Court that the main ruling party be dissolved and the prime minister and 36 party executives be banned from politics for five years.
One of the stranded Britons is advertising agency worker Nadine Howard, from Hampstead, north west London, who is stuck in the Thai resort of Phuket at the end of a two-week holiday with her boyfriend.
She had been travelling with Taiwanese carrier EVA Air but was unable to get a flight from Phuket to Bangkok to get back to London. Her father Philip Howard said today: “They have had to pay £1,000 to get a flight from Phuket to Hong Kong and then they are hoping to fly back to London from there.”
