Passengers ground flights

2003-12-24 22:53

Washington - US authorities have furnished France with the names of suspicious passengers whose presence on passenger lists caused the cancellation of three US-bound Air France flights earlier on Wednesday, a US homeland security department official said.

"The threat was coming from passengers, not from the pilots," said the official, who declined to be named.

"It was American information about passengers that we have shared with the French," the official added. "We gave them the names."

The three Paris-to-Los Angeles flights were cancelled as security was tightened on flights bound for the United States, where authorities are on high alert for terror attacks by the al-Qaeda network.

The three flights were cancelled after the US embassy in Paris warned it feared they might be used for terrorist attacks, interior ministry officials in the French capital said. A top-level ministerial meeting was called to consider the embassy alert.

Officials in Los Angeles said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the department of homeland security were probing an unspecified threat, but refused to dilvulge specific details.

The alert came as US authorities stepped up surveillance on all flights arriving in the United States.

The government on Sunday raised the nation's terrorist threat level from "elevated," or yellow, to "high," or orange.

- AFP