Officials conducted a security sweep of Islamabad’s recently renamed Benazir Bhutto International Airport yesterday after receiving a warning about a possible suicide attack. “It was a specific threat,” said senior security official Colonel Ashraf Faiz. “The airport is on red alert.”
In February last year a suicide attacker opened fire near the VIP area of the same airport before blowing himself up with a hand grenade, injuring three people. The airport is located on the outskirts of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, about eight miles from Islamabad, and is outside the main security cordon for the capital.
At least one carrier, BA, has suspended its six weekly flights to the capital for an unspecified time period.
