02 March 2005	Wednesday	20 Muharram 1426

LONDON, March 1: More than 300 passengers were evacuated on Tuesday from a Pakistan International Airlines plane after smoke was seen coming from its undercarriage as it landed at a British airport, officials and police said.

The flight from Karachi to Toronto, which had stopped at Manchester airport in England to refuel, had just landed and was taxiing to the terminal when smoke was reported coming from the undercarriage of the Boeing 777 jet.

Airport officials initially said that the undercarriage had caught fire after the plane landed at 9:03am. "Because it stopped on a taxiway the pilot decided to disembark the passengers using the emergency slides. There were 323 passengers on board, all of them were okay," airport spokesman Russell Craig told AFP.

However, police said later that the plane appeared simply to have suffered overheating. "A small number of passengers were treated at the scene for minor injuries," a police spokesman said. The airport was shut for around 15 minutes, a spokeswoman for Britain's National Air Traffic Services said. -AFP