Singaporean school principal Tan Shook Fund, 43, and her four-year-old son were swept away by strong currents as they tried to walk along a ridge between two islands on Thursday morning in Krabi province, provincial tourist police told AFP.

Her husband was injured in a failed attempt to save them and was treated in Krabi Hospital and discharged.

"When they set out for the island the water was knee-deep but when they tried to return the tide had risen and there was torrential rain and strong currents," a policeman said.

Three people meanwhile have been killed in Nakhon Si Thammarat province while three have drowned in Songkhla, Pattalung and Narathiwat provinces, a Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation official told AFP.

The floods across most of Thailand's southern peninsula were receding except in the provincial capital Chumpon, where 120.3 millimetres (4.7 inches) of rain fell Saturday morning, the official added.

In October three people were killed and some 200,000 evacuated in Thailand's upper southern and central provinces during major flooding estimated to have caused damage worth least one billion baht (25 million dollars).

Flooding in the south has worsened in recent decades in the wake of rampant deforestation. A moratorium has been in place against logging in Thailand since 1988.

TERRA.WIRE