A British woman stranded by the closure of Bangkok's airports has been seriously injured trying to catch a flight out of southern Thailand, police have confirmed.

Two Canadian tourists travelling with her were killed yesterday as their van overturned on the way to Phuket airport early yesterday.

"The van overturned and plunged into the roadside after it tried to avoid crashing with a car in front, which suddenly slammed on the brakes," Captain Charkrit Nima of the local police force told AFP.

He said six tourists were in the van, rushing to get a Cathay Pacific flight from Phuket, one of the regional airports which has laid on extra flights because of the week long airport siege which has trapped around 350,000 tourists in Thailand.

The governments of France, Spain and Australia have sent special flights to evacuate stranded holidaymakers but British consul officials maintain that they will intervene only to help stranded Britons with medical, legal and financial problems.

Hundreds of tourists, frsutrated at the Thai government's refusal to do anything to open the main airports, are clubbing together to hire cars, or are travelling by train, and coach to reach regional airports, some of which are up to eight hours away by road.

Tourists are also scrambling to leave via the small, Vietnam-era U-Tapao airport southeast of Bangkok, where queues snake round the basic terminal and thousands of passengers are tkaing up to eight hours to get through the one scanner and onto their flights.

Check-in facilities have also been opened at a hotel and a convention centre in Bangkok to try to work through the backlog of frustrated holidaymakers.

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