Beijing: A Chinese airplane was forced to
make an emergency landing on Thursday after a woman passenger
claimed there was a bomb aboard, the state media reported.
The flight, headed for Urumqi, capital of northwest
China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, was forced to land
at Jiayuguan Airport in Gansu province, Xinhua news agency
reported from Lanzhou, the provincial capital.
The flight was heading for Urumqi after taking off from
Beijing's Nanyuan Airport, it quoted a police official as
saying.
"A woman passenger claimed that there was a bomb inside
the plane, threatening to blow off the aircraft," said Chang
Shouyuan, head of the municipal Public Security Bureau of
Jiayuguan.
Local police have detained the woman passenger after the
forced landing and are searching the plane for explosives.
The passenger's name and ethnicity were not immediately
known. The affected airline and the number of passengers on
the flight were also not disclosed.
The restive Xinjiang region is home to a mainly Uygur
Muslims, who are against Chinese rule.
In August 2009, a flight to Urumqi was forced to return
to Afghanistan following a bomb threat. It came a month after
bloody ethnic riots in Urumqi killed nearly 200 people and
injured around 1,700.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, October 13, 2011, 21:02