UK: British police were checking passenger baggage last night after a commercial airliner carrying more than 300 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing under military escort at Stansted airport.
The emergency occurred after an anonymous caller claimed that there was a bomb on board "for Iraq".
"The passengers are mainly Greek. The incident is most likely a hoax but we were obliged to get the plane down safely,"Senior police officer Liam Brigginshaw said.
Olympic Airways Flight 411 from Athens to New York was in British airspace when its pilot was warned that a Greek newspaper had been told the flight would explode.
Two RAF Tornado fighter jets were scrambled, and escorted the plane to Stansted, Essex, which has extensive experience of dealing with security threats, including several hijackings.
As darkness fell last night, police erected arc lights and specialist explosives teams prepared to board the aircraft with sniffer dogs to begin a thorough search expected to last for several hours.
"It could be a long evening. The safety of our officers is paramount," said a police spokeswoman. "We have well-rehearsed contingency plans for this sort of thing. We treated it as a full emergency situation and mounted a full emergency response."
The threat, made to the Greek daily newspaper Ethnos, was followed by a second call - apparently from another man - who said: "Bomb, Olympics, America, the Americans will soon see."
However, Greek authorities appeared baffled as to why Olympic Airways, the country's national airline, should be targeted. Greece has traditionally good relations with the Arab world, and was against the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Security is at a high at the new international airport in Athens following the Olympic Games last month, and the aircraft would have been checked before taking off from the Greek capital at lunchtime.
Whitehall sources said last night that the airliner was escorted to Stansted by two Tornado fighters from the quick-reaction alert team set up after the September 11th attacks on the US.
Passengers were interviewed by police after their evacuation from the Airbus A340-300.
Mr Leonard Vlamis, chief executive of Olympic Airways, said last night: "We were told to land at Stansted, which it did safely. The passengers are in Stansted airport right now. They are all okay. The passengers were calm and they were evacuated properly and safely. There was no problem inside the flight - everything was normal." - (Guardian Service)
• Four men arrested on suspicion of terrorism at a north London hotel will be interrogated for another four days by the police. The men can be detained until 1.30 p.m. on October 1st after an extension was issued under the Terrorism Act.
Three of the men were arrested in a "pre-planned" operation by officers from the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist branch at a hotel in Brent Cross on Friday. Another man was arrested at his north London home. They were arrested under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Police officers were "acting on information received from the News of the World". The newspaper said yesterday it had uncovered a plot to buy radioactive material for a dirty bomb. It said an undercover reporter posing as a Muslim extremist discovered a Saudi sympathetic to "the Muslim cause" who was willing to pay £300,000 for a kilo of radioactive red mercury. - (PA)