Airport evacuated after bomb threat

AN AIRPORT that was the starting point for one of the September 11 hijackers was evacuated for several hours after receiving a bomb threat signed under the alleged terrorist’s name.

Police found nothing and Portland airport was reopened yesterday.

The airport was evacuated on Tuesday night after police received a hang-up emergency call shortly at about 9:30pm that led them to a pay phone at a strip mall where they found a note signed by “Mohamed Atta” warning that the airport would be destroyed at 11pm.

Atta, considered the ringleader of the attacks, passed through the Portland airport the morning of September 11, 2001, before joining other terrorists in Boston and hijacking a plane that was flown into the World Trade Centre in New York.

Portland police searched the terminal, the parking garage and eight planes that were parked at the airport.

During the search, 375 passengers on eight inbound planes were taken by bus directly to a nearby hotel instead of the terminal.

Meanwhile, Berlin’s Tegel airport was temporarily closed yesterday to allow the controlled explosion of a 1,000-pound (454 kg) US World War Two bomb unearthed during construction work.

A flight carrying US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was in the German capital for a NATO defence ministers’ meeting, took off from Tegel shortly before the airport was closed.

Takeoffs and landings at the airport, one of Germany’s busiest, were suspended for about an hour, an adjacent highway was closed, trains on a nearby subway line were halted and local people evacuated from the area.