Fake bomb prompts emergency landing of Air France flight

NAIROBI, Kenya – A fake explosive rigged with cardboard, sheets of paper and a household timer forced an Air France flight into an emergency landing in Kenya on Sunday, sending hundreds of passengers down emergency slides in what the airline’s CEO said was the fourth bomb hoax against the airline in recent weeks.

The homemade apparatus was discovered around midnight hidden in a lavatory cabinet behind a mirror where it was apparently placed during the approximately 11-hour flight to Paris from the island of Mauritius, said the airline’s CEO, Frederic Gagey. He said the airline has had heightened security checks around the world since the Nov. 13 attacks that left 130 people dead in Paris.

The Boeing 777 was heading to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris when its pilots requested an emergency landing early Sunday at Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa.

Six passengers were being questioned, including the person who informed the crew about the device, said a Kenyan official who is part of the investigation and who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.