TAIPEI—Taiwan's government said it has increased security on its flights to Beijing after receiving an anonymous call last Tuesday about an alleged terrorist plot targeting Beijing's main airport.
Tsai Der-sheng, director-general of Taiwan's National Security Bureau, said Monday that the bureau had relayed the information to China on March 4, but cautioned against linking the incident with missing Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared early Saturday morning.
"Taiwan has already alerted China regarding the information," Mr. Tsai said. "We believe this incident doesn't have a high correlation with the missing Malaysian aircraft."
Taiwan's Aviation Police Bureau added it could not confirm the veracity of the anonymous call, but it had increased security for luggage and flights leaving for Beijing. This was the first bomb threat call the bureau has received in more than a year, it said.
Taiwan's China Airlines Ltd. had received a phone call in the afternoon of March 4 from a person who said he was a member of a French counterterrorism group, Taiwan's Aviation Police Bureau told The Wall Street Journal Monday. The caller said his group wasn't able to get in touch with authorities in Beijing, and that it had received information that an East Turkestan terrorist group planned to bomb the Beijing Capital International Airport. East Turkestan is the name for the proposed independent state sought by separatists in China's northwest Xinjiang province.
The bureau said the caller didn't identify himself or say which counterterrorism group he represented, or identify the organization with the bombing plans. The bureau also declined to speculate on why the caller would contact a Taiwanese airline.
China Airlines on Monday confirmed it received the call on March 4 and said it had passed on the recording and information relevant to the call to Taiwan's government. The airline operator, Taiwan's biggest in terms of fleet size, didn't elaborate further.
Taiwan's Apple Daily reported Monday that the island's authorities received intelligence around March 3 that China's Beijing International Airport would be a target of a terrorist attack.
Security was already heightened in China last week for the National People's Congress and following a stabbing attack on March 1 at the Kunming Railway Station that authorities said was planned by Xinjiang separatists.
Source: Wall Street Journal by Eva Dou and Jenny W. Hsu
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