(Adds details from airport spokesman, TSA)
MINNEAPOLIS, April 27 (Reuters) – Police have detained a man
for questioning after his baggage set off a bomb scare and
prompted authorities to clear a terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport for 90 minutes Friday morning, an official
said.
About 1,000 people were cleared from Terminal 2 of the
airport after the luggage item triggered an alert for a possible
explosive substance in checked baggage, airport spokesman
Patrick Hogan said.
“They have removed the bag and the airport police have the
owner of the bag in custody for questioning,” Hogan said.
The police bomb squad from Bloomington, a suburb adjoining
the airport, responded to the incident and took the items that
were seen by security personnel on the scanner, Hogan said.
“We don’t believe that it was an explosive, but these
scanners are designed to pick up a number of different kinds of
compounds so anytime there is an item that has one of those
compounds in it, it alarms,” Hogan said.
At Terminal 2, passengers take checked bags to a scanner
where Transportation Security Administration personnel check
them. Passengers are screened at a single security checkpoint.
The public area of the terminal was cleared and approaching
roads were closed temporarily in the incident to ensure safety,
the TSA said in a statement.
Terminal 2 serves Southwest Airlines, AirTran, Sun Country
and Iceland Air, Hogan said. The larger Terminal 1 and airport
runways were not affected by the incident, he said.
(Reporting by David Bailey; Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by
Vicki Allen)
