A suspicious device has prompted a French airliner carrying 473 people to make an emergency landing in Kenya. Passengers and crew were safely evacuated from the Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris.
Kenyan police said the Boeing 777 was safely evacuated on Sunday after landing at Mombasa’s international airport. The device found in a toilet was being analyzed.
Mombasa’s Moi Airport was closed down during the evacuation, according to a source quoted by the Associated Press news agency.
Kenyan head of police General Joseph Boinnet said bomb experts were “determining whether the device’s components contained explosives.”
Starting point Mauritius
The airliner has left Mauritius at 9 p.m. local time (1700 UTC) and made the emergency landing some four hours later.
On board were 459 passengers and a crew of 14.
France remains traumatized by a series of jihadist attacks, including the bombing in January of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and attacks in and around Paris on November 13 that left 130 people dead.
ipj/sms (AP, Reuters)
