On the third day of one of Britain’s biggest security alerts, the authorities closed down part of a major London airport and suspended flights today after a 37-year-old Venezuelan arrived from South America with a hand grenade in his luggage. The explosive was found when the man’s bags were searched after his British Airways flight from Colombia landed at Gatwick airport, south of London, the police said. The resulting suspension of flights from Gatwick’s North Terminal showed how jittery Britons had become. Two men were also arrested near Heathrow today, the police said, following newspaper reports that Britain ordered an alert on Tuesday because of fears that Al Qaeda operatives planned to fire an antiaircraft missile at a commercial airliner. The two men were found along the flight path on an approach to Heathrow, but had no weapons. The police said that neither the Venezuelan man arrested at Gatwick nor the two men taken into custody near Heathrow were believed to be linked to an Qaeda threat. Full Story
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