Iraq airport dismisses report of attack on Swedish airliner (AFP)

[Eugene]

Source: Agence France-Presse

11/08/07 12h14 GMT+1
AFP News brief

Iraq airport dismisses report of attack on Swedish airliner

Aviation officials from Iraq's Kurdish region on Saturday
dismissed reports that a Swedish airliner had been targeted
by a missile as it took off with 130 passengers on board.

According to the Swedish TT news agency, the pilots of a
Nordic Airways MD-83 jet saw flashes in the sky on Thursday
as they took off from Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq and
feared they may be under attack.

But the chairman of the Sulaimaniyah Airport Authority,
Kamaran Ahmed, said a local investigation found no evidence
that a missile was fired and blamed the scare on bright lights
being used on the ground.

"We think that the object that had been noticed by the pilot
'suspiciously' was a special type of 'high intensity lighting
projector' mounted on vehicles usually used by hunters in
the area," he said, in a statement in English.

-snip-

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