Egyptair jet makes emergency landing in Uzbekistan over bomb threat
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Cairo - An Egyptair plane en route from Cairo to Beijing made an emergency landing in Uzbekistan over a bomb threat, officials at the state-run airline said Wednesday.
"Three hours after the plane left the Cairo airport on its way to Beijing, a security agency at the airport received an anonymous call claiming that there was a bomb on the plane," an Egyptair official said.
"The company alerted the plane pilot and asked him to land at the nearest airport," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The aircraft, which was carrying 118 passengers and 17 crew members, landed at an airport in Uzbekistan and is being checked for explosive devices, the official said.
On May 19, an Egyptair plane crashed in the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people aboard while en route from Paris to Cairo. Search teams have since been hunting for the two black boxes of the Airbus 320 to determine the cause of the disaster.
The crash came almost six months after a Russian passenger jet broke up mid-air shortly after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.
Russian authorities said that the incident was caused by a bomb.
The Islamic State extremist group, which operates in Sinai, claimed responsibility and published a photograph of a soft drink can which it said had been filled with explosives and smuggled onto the flight.
- DPA
