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Suspicious object found at Kaliningrad airport

The suspicious object has been found by the airport’s staff and now the police are finding out what it is

KALININGRAD. January 5. /TASS/. A suspicious object has been found at Khrabrovo Airport in Russia’s westernmost city of Kaliningrad. The object has been transferred to the police and there has been no need for the evacuation of passengers, airport directorate spokeswoman Natalia Gritsun told TASS on Thursday.

"There are now a lot of people in the airport passenger terminal and an impression may be created that some are being taken out of the building but this is not so," the spokeswoman said.

The suspicious object has been found by the airport’s staff and now the police are finding out what it is. Security has been tightened at the airport passenger terminal. There has been no need for the evacuation of people and the air harbor continues receiving and dispatching flights, she said.

Seven passenger planes from Moscow and St. Petersburg have arrived at Khrabrovo Airport by now and none of them have left in the opposite direction yet. Also, about five planes are waiting for their landing in Khrabrovo and several more airliners are en route to Kaliningrad, the spokeswoman said.

Khrabrovo Airport was closed on Wednesday due to a plane incident.

Plane’s incident at Khrabrovo Airport

Aeroflot’s Airbus A-320 was en route from Moscow carrying 167 passengers and five crew members, when it overshot a runway by five meters (16.4 feet) landing at Khrabrovo Airport in Kaliningrad during a heavy snowstorm on the night of January 3.

The nose landing gear of the plane reportedly gave way as the passenger jet overshot the landing strip and got stuck in a turf.

All the passengers and crew members were safely evacuated via inflatable chutes of the aircraft.

The airport, however, had been closed since the incident, which reportedly left stranded over 1,500 passengers in Kaliningrad.

The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal probe into the incident.

Khrabrovo Airport resumed its operations on Thursday morning, a senior local official said.

"Everything is normal, we are opening the airport at 6:00 a.m. (4:00 a.m. GMT), three Aeroflot flights are ready to take off for Sheremetyevo, the damaged aircraft is already in a hangar, the landing and take-off strip is in a normal condition and we are expecting at 7:30 an arrival of an Aeroflot flight from Moscow," Valeria Rodina quoted acting Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Anton Alikhanov as saying.

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