Saturday, June 30, 2007
MSNBC
An
image from a mobile phone shows smoke rising along the side of the
international airport in Glasgow, Scotland, on Saturday.
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GLASGOW, Scotland - Two men rammed a flaming sport utility vehicle into the main terminal of Glasgow airport Saturday, crashing into the glass doors at the entrance and sparking a fire, witnesses said. Police said two suspects were arrested.
The green SUV barreled toward the building at full speed before crashing into security barriers. Witnesses said two men jumped out, one of them engulfed in flames. Two men were arrested, Strathclyde Police spokeswoman Lisa O’Neil said.
The airport—Scotland’s largest—was evacuated and flights suspended. Smoke and black flames rose from the car in front of the main entrance.
“The Jeep is completely on fire and it exploded not long after. It exploded at the entrance to the terminal,” witness Stephen Clarkson told the BBC. “It may have been an explosion of petrol in the tank because it was not a massive explosion.”
Two men—one of them engulfed in flames—were in the SUV, said BBC News executive Helen Boaden, who was at the airport. She said a traveler tried to restrain the man.
“Then the police came over and wrestled him to the ground—the fire was burning through his clothes—and finally put him out with a fire extinguisher,” she said.
A witness in Glasgow told Sky News that an Asian man who had been inside the vehicle scuffled with police immediately after the incident, was wrestled to the ground and detained.
Another witness said a second man, also Asian, was on fire following the blaze and badly burnt. The flames were extinguished and he was also detained by police, the witness said.
Another witness told the BBC that there was a heavy stench of gasoline after the SUV crashed. He said he did not believe the vehicle was a car bomb, saying that the explosion was relatively small.
"There was chaos at the airport," James Edgar, another witness, told Sky News. "I was in the airport building trying to book a holiday. Suddenly people were running past us. Suddenly everyone said to get out of the airport."
BAA, which manages the airport, was not immediately available to comment.
Glasgow airport handles around 8.5 million passengers a year, according to its website, and would have been packed with holidaymakers at the time of the incident, which took place at around 3:20 p.m. (11:20 a.m. ET), according to Glasgow police.
