Italian jetfighter scrambles to deal with security risk

AN Italian F16 jet fighter intercepted a suspicious plane heading to Rome yesterday, hours after the pope’s funeral and escorted it to a military airport.

The plane was forced to land at the airport at 3.20pm after intelligence sources warned it was carrying a bomb, an airforce spokesman said.

However, a team of paramilitary carabinieri officers inspected it and found nothing. He said the plane was cleared to leave the military airport and land at Rome’s Ciampino airport, which was closed for routine civilian traffic because of the funeral.

The Lear Jet 131 executive plane was headed to Ciampino to pick up the president of Macedonia and his delegation and take them back to Skopje, the airforce said.

Officials in Belgrade, who asked not to be named, said a plane sent to fly home the official Serbia-Montenegro delegation after the funeral was searched following a bomb threat, and was later allowed to leave for Belgrade with its passengers.

It was not immediately clear whether this was the plane that was intercepted.

The incident happened three hours after the end of the pope’s funeral while many of the dignitaries who attended the rites were departing. US President George W Bush and his delegation had left about two hours before the plane was spotted.

The incident came amid a heightened alert because of the presence in Rome of dozens of royalty, and heads of state or government for the funeral.

The pope was laid to rest under heavy security, with police helicopters and airforce combat jets flying overhead, authorities using X-ray machines to screen pilgrims’ bags and hundreds of officers guarding the roads leading to St Peter’s Square.

Elite Carabinieri paramilitary police armed with automatic rifles were stationed at virtually every major intersection in Rome, part of the capital’s efforts to minimise the threat of a terrorist attack on the more than 80 heads of state and monarchs attending.

Motorcades carried VIPs to the square in rapid succession, the leaders out of view inside limousines with tinted glass. Bishops and pilgrims alike walked through metal detectors beneath the colonnades at the entrance to St Peter’s Square.