UK-bound jet in bomb threat

A UK-BOUND plane was forced to land in Turkey yesterday after a Pakistani airline received bomb threats by e-mail.

The plane was en route to Manchester airport yesterday afternoon when officials in Islamabad received the terror warning, a Pakistani International Airlines chief said. All 347 passengers were declared safe while bomb disposal teams carried out searches on the grounded PK709 jet in Istanbul, he added.

The passengers and 16 crew were ushered off the plane as sniffer dogs carried out searches at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, Captain Tasneem Mozaffar, head of global operations for the airline, said.