- LONDON (Reuters) -- Britain
warned Sunday that travelers face years of severe security alerts like
one that forced several international flights to be grounded last week
amid fears of a Sept. 11-style terror attack.
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- Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said exceptional
circumstances and specific information about a possible terror threat led
British Airways to cancel two flights from Britain to Washington and one
to the Saudi capital Riyadh last week.
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- "For many years to come, we are going to be living
in an age where there is going to be a heightened state of alert. Sometimes
it will be quite severe," he told BBC television.
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- "Where we have to cancel a flight, the grounds are
very clear in our minds and we are justified in taking that decision."
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- A BA flight from London, grounded Thursday and Friday
due to security alerts, finally left Saturday and landed in Washington
Sunday morning.
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- Passengers said security had been extremely tight at
London's Heathrow airport before their departure, but the flight itself
aboard the jumbo jet was uneventful.
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- Flights from Mexico and France to the United States were
also canceled over the holiday period due to security fears.
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- Darling declined to comment on the cause of the BA alert.
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- Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, citing a senior intelligence
source, said security services had word of a plot by the Islamic extremist
group al Qaeda again to hijack several jets -- including a BA plane --
simultaneously and crash them into big U.S. targets, in a re-run of Sept.
11.
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- The Sunday Telegraph quoted security sources as saying
two al Qaeda members were at large in Britain and planned to detonate a
shoe bomb or similar device in an aircraft lavatory.
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- But Darling said the government was not prepared to give
a running commentary on the intelligence information it had.
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- "Most people would expect the government to look
at all the information they have got and then reach a decision as to what
is best to enable the aircraft to fly safely," he said.
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- "Sometimes it is thought that the best course of
action is to cancel a particular flight -- but that is very much the exception."
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