Terror alert grounds UK to Kenya flights
All flights between the UK and Kenya will be suspended from 2200BST tonight (Thursday) because of specific threats to British planes.
The Department for Transport has called on airlines to suspend their services and British Airways has now cancelled its daily departure to Kenya.
The company is now seeking to arrange safe passage for hundreds stranded of passengers to neighbouring Tanzania, where it can fly them back to the UK.
According to the Association of British Travel Agents the terrorist threat level for Kenya has been ‘increased to imminent’ and the organisation is in discussions with Britons in the country about arrangements for their safety.
The trade group announced: ‘ABTA has been notified by the Department of Transport that planes to and from Kenya will be grounded with effect from 2200 UK time until further notice because of a threat to UK civil aviation interests.’
Anyone due to fly to Kenya should be offered alternative arrangements, such as a refund or alternate destination, from their tour operator. Around 100,000 Britons holiday each year in Kenya.
Today’s warning follows an attempt to shoot down a plane carrying Israeli tourists near Mombassa last November, swiftly followed by a suicide bomb attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in the same area, which killed 15 people.
It is not clear yet where the threat originated, though there have been recent whispers about the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in the country and suggestions that one of the FBI’s most wanted al-Qaeda suspects, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, has returned to Kenya. He is accused of playing a key role in both the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi and the suicide bombing at the Paradise Hotel. Kenyan security forces are now on high alert.
Earlier today US authorities called on Americans to postpone all non-essential travel to Kenya.
