Pakistan plane lands in Malaysia after bomb alert

A Pakistan International Airlines plane with 164 passengers on board has landed at Kuala Lumpur airport after a bomb alert, officials said Thursday. The incident came just minutes after another PIA flight bound for Britain was forced to make an unscheduled stop in Istanbul because of a bomb threat, the airline said. The scheduled flight from the Pakistani city of Lahore to the Malaysian capital landed at 9:24 pm (1424 GMT) on Wednesday, airport authorities said, after a bomb threat was received while it was in mid-air. "At 8:45 pm (1345 GMT) Malaysia Airports received information from Pakistan International Airline Headquarters informing of an aircraft bomb warning for Airbus 313 Flight PK898 from Lahore," the airport authorities said in a statement. "The flight PK898 safely landed at 9:24pm. The airline confirmed a total of 164 passengers, 3 cockpit crew and 10 cabin crew on board." Airport authorities said the aircraft has been parked at an isolated bay at the airport while police investigate. The airport said all the passengers had left the plane and were being held at a secure lounge while they were screened. In the earlier incident, a similar bomb alert forced a PIA plane from Lahore to Manchester to land at Istanbul's Ataturk airport on Wednesday. That alert came as the aircraft was flying over the Bulgarian capital Sofia and caused panic among passengers, Turkey's state-run news agency Anatolia said. A senior PIA official confirmed the two bomb threats. "We received emails about the presence of bombs on two PIA flights," the official told AFP. "Since the flights had taken off already, the pilots were directed to land at the nearest airport." "One flight bound for Manchester landed in Istanbul and the second flight touched down at Kuala Lumpur," the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media. The official said no bomb had been found during the search of the aircraft according to the information he had received. PIA's spokeswoman in the southern port city of Karachi was not available.