Authorities on heightened alert for terrorism arrested a Venezuelan man carrying a hand grenade in his bag at Gatwick Airport today, evacuated one terminal and suspended flights at the airport, Britain’s busiest after Heathrow. The response to the grenade discovery came on the third day of one of Britain’s biggest security crackdowns in response to possible attacks by operatives of Al Qaeda, and it illustrated how jittery Britons have become as a possible war with Iraq appears more imminent. The arrested man was identified as a 37-year-old traveler on a British Airways flight arriving from Colombia. The closed terminal at Gatwick, which is south of London, was reopened by tonight and flights had resumed. For the past three days, armed police officers have patrolled Heathrow, west of London, backed by troops stationed there for the first time since 1994, when Irish Republican guerrillas launched a mortar attack on the airport. Two men were arrested near Heathrow today, the police said, after reports from intelligence officials that Britain ordered the alert on Tuesday because of fears that Qaeda agents planned to fire an antiaircraft missile at a commercial airliner. The two men were found under the flight path on the approach to Heathrow, but had no weapons. Full Story
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