Bomb Threat Forced Evacuation

One woman was killed and more than a dozen people injured Thursday when passengers evacuated a Saudi Arabian Airlines plane on the ground at Colombo, Sri Lanka. They fled in panic after a bomb scare that local police later suspected was a hoax.

The woman who died, along with other passengers who were hurt, jumped from the Boeing 747's emergency exits as the aircraft sat on the tarmac prior to a flight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

"They are still searching, but (the scare) was just a rumor, I think," Colombo's Assistant Superintendent of Police, Gamini Perera, told Reuters.

Police said the woman killed apparently suffered a severe fracture, followed by shock.

"Only tomorrow morning we will be doing the post-mortem," said Dr. S.C. Wickramasinghe, in charge of Negombo Hospital, where four of the injured were also being treated. "We think it may be a cervical fracture. A vertebra may have broken."

Shortly after passengers boarded the plane, the control tower got a telephone call conveying the bomb threat.

FMI: www.saudiairlines.com