Flights Resume Out of Bangkok As Protesters Lift Airport Siege

Hopes for the hundreds of thousands of foreign travelers stranded in Thailand were raised yesterday when the first international passenger flights left Bangkok's main airport after anti-government protesters ended their eight-day siege.

Within hours of the lifting of the blockade the first passenger service in a week arrived from the resort island of Phuket, and a Thai Airways flight left for Sydney.

The end of the standoff - which left travelers frustrated and Thailand's tourist industry hamstrung - resembled a victory parade peppered with hugs and handshakes as the protesters declared they had won.

Thousands of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) demonstrators left Suvarnabhumi international airport yesterday morning, a day after a court disbanded the governing party and barred the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, from office for electoral fraud.

But as services resumed, the Thai airports' authority said the arrival of the first three international flights would not happen until tomorrow - although the hope was that normal services could resume soon after to take home the estimated 230,000 trapped tourists. As PAD supporters, dressed in yellow as a mark of respect for the king, packed up their tents and bedrolls, government MPs met to choose an interim leader. The rump of the six-party coalition - led by the People Power party - plans to meet on Monday to select a new prime minister. It will be Thailand's third prime minister in three months and may spark fresh tensions.

Although the end of the standoff has defused the immediate crisis, demonstrators warned they would return if need be, raising the spectre of further violence in the bitterly divided country. "We will come back when the nation needs us," said Somkiat Pongpaibul, a key PAD member, an alliance of Bangkok's urban monarchist elite pitting itself against the rural poor who voted mainly for the government.

There was a carnival mood yesterday as the remaining demonstrators sang and danced to a band on the makeshift stage outside the airport's departure areas. Queues formed before a table set up for PAD's co-founders, Chamlong Srimuang and Sondhi Limthongkul, who signed autographs.

The international airport's manager, Serirat Prasutanond, predicted a speedy return to normality after inspecting the terminal. As he spoke, 700 soldiers and specialist bomb squads moved into the airport complex with sniffer dogs to search for explosive devices, while cleaners cleared the rubbish and IT technicians started rebooting systems shut down a week ago.