World airports boost security Plot to blow up flights to US foiled
PARIS, Aug 10: Security was increased at airports across the globe on Thursday after British police announced they had foiled a plot to blow up flights to the United States with explosives hidden in hand baggage.
Britain and the United States immediately raised their nationwide terrorist alerts to the highest possible level, although Washington said there was no evidence “of plotting in the United States” itself.
This was the first time that Britain had been put on maximum alert, signifying that an attack was still “imminent”.
British police said they had arrested 21 people in connection with a plot “to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale” but the domestic security service, MI5, warned there was still “a serious and sustained threat from international terrorism to the UK and UK interests overseas”.
In France, the government called an emergency meeting to decide on possible new security measures. French airports are already on a “red” terror alert, the country’s second highest level, but no security changes have been made to Eurostar train services connecting Paris and Brussels to London.
Italy also scheduled an anti-terrorism strategy meeting following the British announcement. It also boosted surveillance around “sensitive sites, particularly buildings that could be associated with the United Kingdom”, although Prime Minister Romano Prodi told reporters he did not see any particular threat to Italy itself.
Across the world authorities tightened airport security measures on passengers and luggage travelling to and from Britain and the United States, causing travel delays on all five continents.
London’s Heathrow airport, one of the busiest in the world, was effectively closed to incoming flights.
Passengers on all planes leaving British airports, including on domestic and transit flights, were banned from taking hand luggage on board other than essential items such as money, tickets, keys, medicines and spectacles.
Apart from baby milk, which had to be tasted, all liquids were taken from them.
The United States raised the threat level for incoming commercial flights from Britain to “severe or red”, the highest US level. It banned all liquids “including beverages, hair gels and lotions” on outgoing planes and asked foreign operators to slap the same ban on flights into the United States.
India placed New Delhi’s international airport on maximum alert and imposed emergency anti-hijacking measures, the Press Trust of India reported. The airport banned all visitors and deployed bomb disposal squads with sniffer dogs.
Draconian hand luggage restrictions similar to those imposed by London and Washington were introduced in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Kenya, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.
In Ottawa, officials even stopped the sale of coffee or other drinks beyond airport security checkpoints, the media said.
Elsewhere in Asia and Europe, airport authorities ramped up security patrols and X-ray checks, in some cases scanning passengers’ shoes. Countries affected included Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, Thailand and Spain, where 191 people died in an extremist attack in 2004.
In the volatile Serbian province of Kosovo, administered by the United Nations, a special unit of Ukranian troops was called in to control the airport.
Taking a slightly different tack, Poland introduced police patrols at its airports and on the Warsaw underground railway but said it was not increasing checks on flight passengers.
A spokesman for Tony Blair, who is on holiday in Barbados, said the British prime minister was in “constant contact” with the government but declined to say whether he would fly home to deal with the crisis.
RESTRICTION LIFTED: British airports operator BAA was given approval by air traffic control authorities on Thursday to resume short-haul flights into and out of the Heathrow airport following a foiled bomb plot, a BAA spokeswoman said.
“There is no restriction now on short-haul flights, the restriction that was in place has been lifted” by Britain’s National Air Traffic Services, a BAA spokeswoman said.—AFP
Anwar Iqbal adds from Washington: The Bush administration on Thursday deployed extra air marshals to reinforce security on flights between Britain and the US and raised threat level for flights originating in the UK to red. Red is the highest level of threat.
Alert level for all domestic and international flights in the US has also been raised to orange, the next-highest level. The raise in the alert level led automatically to extra security checks for all passengers using US airports.
Security checks for passengers travelling to and from Britain have been increased many fold. Each passenger has to go through body searches. In some cases, even the luggage they check in is opened before them and searched before being sent through an X-ray machine. Extra security guards have also been deployed at key airports.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told reporters in Washington the measures followed arrests in Britain of people allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights. “This plot, while based in Britain, was international in nature and is suggestive of an al-Qaeda plot, but because the investigation is still ongoing we can’t be definitive about that,” he said.
PARIS, Aug 10: Security was increased at airports across the globe on Thursday after British police announced they had foiled a plot to blow up flights to the United States with explosives hidden in hand baggage.
