AMMAN (IslamOnline) - The passengers of a Saudi Airlines plane on Thursday were evacuated upon arrival at Queen Alia Airport in Amman after civil aviation authorities received a bomb threat, an aviation source said.
Jihad Irsheid, Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority, said an unidentified person phoned the airport and claimed that a bomb was among luggage in the Saudi plane.
"When the plane landed, passengers were evacuated and sniffing dogs and a special team searched the plane and did not find anything," Irsheid told the Jordan Times.
"It was merely a bomb scare and things returned to normal after the three-hour search," he added.
"The phone call came from a public telephone booth and security people have the number, but we do not know who was behind it," Irsheid said.
He said that airport authorities have prepared contingency plans for such situations like this "which was turned into action immediately."
Irsheid indicated that the threat came ten minutes before the MD 90 plane, which was operating a regular flight from Riyadh and Amman, landed at 11:25 a.m.
The official said members of the Saudi soccer club Al Shabab, which is scheduled to play against Al Wihdat on Friday, were on board the plane.
Irsheid did not rule out the possibility that the bomb scare could be linked to the match between the two clubs.
"Such incidents usually come from angry passengers or [an] angry employee of the airport. But it is possible that this incident has something to do with the soccer match," Irsheid said.
"We realized that something was wrong, when we landed and the plane crew asked us to leave all our luggage on the plane," Adel Mokbel, a Saudi sports journalist on board the flight, told Agencie France Press.
"We then saw heightened security and police deployed around the plane. We were taken from the plane in two busloads to an airport lounge, where we had to go through a search," Mokbel told the AFP.
