Scouts may face fine for bomb scare

A Belgian scouting organisation may face a fine and a bill for causing a bomb scare this week at a railway in the city of Leuven where officials found a suspicious package marked “bomb 2”.

The 70,000-member Dutch-speaking federation of Catholic boy and girl scouts apologised on its website for Thursday’s bomb alert, which triggered the evacuation of the rail station, 13 miles east of Brussels.

In a posting on its website today, the federation said local scouts placed the fake bomb as part of game and forgot to remove it afterward. It called the game “inappropriate … especially against the backdrop of current events”.

The local scouts group has apologised for the incident, but may be fined and have to pay for the cost of mobilising police and emergency rescue services.