Photo by AP

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand’s prime minister was ousted Tuesday after weeks of protests closed the capital’s airports, stranding 300,000 travelers. Protesters promised to lift their siege, and international flights were expected to resume Friday.

The government of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat was doomed when the nation’s Constitutional Court dissolved Thailand’s top three ruling parties for electoral fraud in the 2007 vote that brought them to power. Somchai was banned from politics for five years.