German 'flight bomb' scare a security test: minister

A suspect package believed to be containing components of a bomb found at Windhoek airport on Thursday was only a security test, German officials said on Friday.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere stated that the suitcase was only designed for security checks and no explosives of threat to passengers were found in the package.

BKA Federal Crime Office) officials have examined it and the result is that it is a so-called 'real test suitcase' from a U.S. company. This company produces alarm and detection systems and these test suitcases are made to test security measures, he told a news conference in Berlin.

The minister also added that authorities are yet to determine the identity of the person who was trying to load the luggage. The suitcase checked on to a plane en-route to Munich, Germany, was intercepted at the x-ray scanners during the loading of an Air Berlin flight on Thursday morning. German officials maintained the package contained batteries that were attached with wires to a detonator and a ticking clock.

After a six-hour delay, the flight, along with all 296 passengers and 10 crew, was later dispatched to Munich. The incident occurred just a day after Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere claimed there were concrete indications of terrorist attacks being planned against Germany this month. Security has been steeped up at all strategic points.

Earlier this month two packages containing explosive material were intercepted while being shipped by air from Yemen to the United States. Security officials seized a package at the East Midlands airport, in Nottingham, on a flight en route from Cologne to Chicago.

One of the packages was found on a United Parcel Service cargo plane and the other bomb was discovered in a parcel at a FedEx facility in Dubai. The bomb found in East Midlands Airport was concealed in a Hewlett Packard printer and contained 400 grams of the highly potent explosive pentaerythritol trinitrate (PETN). The package found in Dubai was holding 300 grams of PETN explosive material.