Bomb threats close airport

GERMANY’S third busiest airport was closed yesterday after receiving several bomb threats, forcing around 64,000 holiday travellers to be rerouted, German authorities said.

Dusseldorf international airport received several calls to its switchboard threatening to blow up specific aircraft and the airport, said Wolfgang Heimann, a spokesman for the German border police, in charge of airport security.

After closing down the airport at 11.35am and evacuating the terminals, officers with bomb-sniffing dogs fanned out to assess the threat, Heimann said. “One of the threats was a bomb was hidden in the airport building and is to detonate this afternoon,” Heimann said.

Flights were being rerouted to the Cologne/Bonn airport and others, said airport spokesman Torsten Hiermann. Because of the end of the summer holidays, Hiermann said more than 64,000 passengers had been expected to use the airport yesterday and police reported chaotic traffic after the building was shut down.

Border police set up an operations centre in the airport to help their investigation. Hiermann said it was not immediately clear when the airport would be reopened.

Dusseldorf airport was ranked third busiest in Germany in 2002 with nearly 15 million passengers, behind Munich and Frankfurt. Many major carriers use the airport, including British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France.