Updated at: 0811 PST, Sunday, November 14, 2010
BERLIN: The German government said on Saturday that it has relaxed its ban on flights from Yemen, allowing passenger planes to travel between the two countries but still forbidding freight.
Flights with passengers coming from Yemen were allowed to land in Germany as of Friday afternoon as long as they were not transporting freight or mail, a spokeswoman for the transport ministry said, confirming a report in the online edition of Spiegel magazine.
The German government first imposed a ban on air traffic from Yemen on October 31 after the discovery in Dubai and Britain of two bomb-rigged packages coming from the Gulf of Aden state and addressed to the United States.
The parcel found in Britain had also passed through Germany's Cologne/Bonn airport.
The Yemenia airline maintains a regular flight to Germany via Rome each Wednesday.
Yemen faces a continuing threat from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the local branch of Osama bin Laden's extremist organisation. It is also fighting Shiite insurgents in the north and a secessionist movement in the south. |
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