'I'm angry and sad, because I have two small children. They are sick, so we want to go home,' she said.

Although the authorities have started moving airport passengers to nearby hotels, there are still about 3,000 tourists at the airport, reported wire services.

Exhausted travellers were seen sleeping everywhere: On their suitcases, on luggage carts, on security conveyer belts and behind vacated check-in counters, reported AP.

'I went to ask the staff at the counters, but no one was there,' Mr Andre Weise, a 37-year-old tourist from Germany, told AFP.

British tourist Harry Bedford told the BBC that people had initially been told not to leave the airport and that if they did, they would not be given any help and would not be allowed to return.

He said: 'At the moment, I'm in the executive lounge, which has been taken over by about 100 people who are refusing to leave this area, though the authorities want us to go downstairs and sit on marble floors.

'They've turned the air-conditioning off here and changed all the TV channels to show gardening. So we've got no idea what's going on outside.'

Protesters distributed fliers to tourists, trying to explain their action.

After reading the flier, Mr Clay Judd, 30, of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said he didn't know what to make of the situation.

'For us to be upset because we can't have a huge turkey dinner - so what?' he said, one of many waiting inside the terminal for transport to a hotel.

The airport, the eighteenth-busiest in the world, handled more than 40 million passengers last year.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 27, 2008.