A British woman has told how her boyfriend died in a heroic attempt to save her a day after she was rescued from a flooded cave where six other European tourists and their two Thai guides died.

Among the dead was a 10-year-old German boy, whose mother had decided not to take the cave tour.

British survivor Helena Carroll, 24, told Thai media that she took the expedition at the Khao Sok National Park in the southern province of Surat Thani with her British boyfriend on Saturday.

The park is filled with lush rain forest, limestone cliffs and numerous caves.

The other tourists in the group were a Swiss couple and their two daughters, police said.

Halfway through one cave, Carroll said she heard a "sudden roar". I looked behind and saw this rush of water coming toward us," Carroll told The Nation newspaper.

Heavy rains had started falling outside the cave near a waterfall, causing flash floods .

"John and I started climbing," Carroll said, referring to her boyfriend, identified by police as John Cullen.

As they frantically scaled the cave's wall, she watched in horror as other members of the group were pulled into the surging water, and with them all the flashlights that had lit their way.

"We were all alone in the dark. We could not see anything," Carroll said. Her boyfriend didn't think they could survive clinging onto the cave's walls.

"He decided that he would get into the current and flow with it. He thought the current would take him out, then he could bring help to rescue me," she told The Nation.

She didn't see him again, until rescuers pulled her from the cave on Sunday.

"My boyfriend John. Is he OK? Is he OK?" she asked as a camera crew filmed the rescue from Thai television station Channel 9.

"They took me to a place which was being used as a mortuary. I saw John's body in a box next to one of the beautiful little Swiss girls," she told The Nation.

It remains unclear why the group was in the park to begin with.

The province's governor, Winai Phopradit, said Sunday that he had ordered the national park to close during the current rainy season.

"We have signs both in English and Thai warning tourists not to go into the cave during heavy rains," he said.

Agencies

(China Daily 10/16/2007 page11)