Czech police search Lufthansa flight after bomb threat

Czech police were searching a Lufthansa plane today after an anonymous caller said a bomb was aboard a 144-person flight that took off from Frankfurt and landed in Prague.

"All the passengers have already left the aircraft, but at this moment I can't yet officially confirm that it was a false alert, as the search will still take several hours," Czech police spokeswoman Katerina Rendlova told AFP.

She said a man told the Czech carrier CSA that "terrorists" were carrying a bomb aboard the flight in a call placed at 0833 GMT, an hour before the plane landed at Vaclav Havel Airport Prague.
 

Police detained the caller, described as a mentally unhinged 34-year-old man, before the flight landed by tracking down his phone to the western city of Pilsen.

Airport traffic had not been affected, airport spokeswoman Marika Janouskova told AFP.