India's Kalaburagi airport receives bomb threat

NEW DELHI, June 24 (Xinhua) -- An airport in India's southwestern state of Karnataka Monday received a bomb threat email, prompting authorities to initiate a search operation, police said.

According to police, bomb detection and disposal squads along with sniffer dogs were rushed to airport premises. However, nothing suspicious was found during the search that was underway until the last reports poured in.

Kalaburagi airport is about 617 km north of Bengaluru, the capital city of Karnataka.

A senior police official told the media the airport director received an email from an anonymous sender claiming that a bomb was planted inside the airport premises. He said the mail sender threatened to blast the entire airport using a powerful bomb.

Last week, 41 airports in India and over 50 hospitals in Mumbai city received email threats warning of a bomb on their premises. However, all of them were later found to be hoax calls.

In the backdrop of increasing hoax bomb threat calls to airports, India's civil aviation security body Bureau of Civil Aviation Security has proposed a five-year flying ban on those who issue such threats.

Over the past two months, a series of hoax bomb threats have been sent to schools, airports and hospitals across the country including the national capital territory Delhi.