An Air France bomb threat caused a panic on Saturday. The plane was supposed to take off from Venezuela and head to Paris but authorities took the passengers off of the flight before it took off due to a possible bomb threat.
According to Reuters, Venezuela's interior minister said that experts from the Venezuelan intelligence agency Sebin were called to inspect the plane. The aircraft was supposed to depart on an overnight flight to France from Caracas' Simon Bolivar international airport. Sebin had received information from French intelligence and anti-terrorist authorities that there may have been a bomb on board.
"The information we have is that a terrorist group intended to place an explosive on a flight between France and Venezuela," the minister, who is also the head of Sebin said according to Reuters. There were no more details.
"We don't want to speculate on the motives because the information comes directly from French intelligence services," Rodriguez Torres told AP adding that the information is still being processed.
The delayed flight, Flight AF385 was going to be rescheduled after the search. Technicians and explosives experts inspected the aircraft along with a canine team. It is not clear what the results of the search were.
Passengers were not told why their flight was delayed. They were told at the last minute that it was delayed so that the Airbus A340-300 aircraft could be checked.
"We only learned reading Twitter that it could've been a bomb," passenger Jesus Arandia told AP. The passengers were only told at midnight that their flight would be rescheduled for Sunday afternoon.
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