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Air France plane lands in Kenya over bomb scare

Sunday, 20 December 2015 8:01 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 20 December 2015 8:01 AM ]

An Air France Boeing 777 taxis before taking off from Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport on its way to Paris, France. ©AP

An Air France plane has made an emergency landing in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa over a bomb threat.

The Boeing 777 Air France flight 463 was on its way to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris after leaving Mauritius at 9 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) when a device suspected to be a bomb was found in the lavatory on Saturday night.

The flight with 459 passengers and 14 crew members on board landed at Mombasa’s Moi International Airport before 1 a.m. local time on Sunday (2137 GMT Saturday).

The plane “requested an emergency landing after a device suspected to be a bomb was discovered in the lavatory, an emergency was prepared and it landed safely and all passengers evacuated,” police spokesman Charles Owino said.

All passengers left the aircraft safely and the device was removed, added Owino, noting that experts are analyzing the suspected device “to establish if it had any explosives.”

The plane was still in Mombasa airport in the early morning.

The development came weeks after an Airbus A-321, operated by Russia’s Metrojet, broke up mid-air over the Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, minutes after take-off. All the 224 people, mostly Russians, on board died.

The photo, taken on November 1, 2015, shows the wreckage of an A-321 Russian airliner in Wadi al-Zolomat, a mountainous area in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where the plane crashed the day before. ©AFP

After the incident on October 31, an affiliate of Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in Egypt claimed responsibility for the crash, saying it had smuggled a bomb on board.

Russian officials initially cast doubt on the account that the incident was an act of terror, but on November 17, Moscow said an investigation had found that a bomb brought down the Saint Petersburg-bound aircraft.

The United States and Britain have also said that information gathered by their intelligence services showed the crash was likely caused by a bomb.

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