Kuwait hunts for person who made hoax bomb threat call
I want to assure that the security forces have the ability to identify the person behind the bomb threat call, interior ministry spokesman says
Manama: Kuwait's interior ministry said that it was confident it would identify the person who made the hoax bomb threat call that prompted the closure and evacuation of Kuwait Stock Exchange on Monday early on Monday.
"While we thank all the people who responded positively to our operations to evacuate the Kuwait Stock Exchange as we looked for the explosives, I want to assure that the security forces have the ability to identify the person behind the bomb threat call," Colonel Mohammah Hashim Al Saber, the interior ministry spokesman, said.
"The interior ministry inspected the stock exchange following the anonymous call threat about the existence of explosives inside the building. The ministry takes every call seriously and competent forces were dispatched immediately after the call at 1.33 pm," Al Saber said.
Civil defence, special security and public security staff as well as firemen and doctors were present at the high-rise stone and glass multi-storey building in downtown Kuwait City during the evacuation and search efforts.
The hoax call, made shortly after the day's trading ended, warned that the bomb would blow up in the building that also houses a number of commercial offices and brokerages.
Minutes before the call, the Kuwait Stock Exchange issued its daily bulletin, saying that its price index ended the day's trading session with a drop of 10.6 points to reach 7,047.9 points.
In September, a hoax bomb threat forced Al Wataniya, a Kuwaiti passenger plane, bound for Damascus to return to the airport 40 minutes after taking off.
In March 2008, a hoax phone call warning of a bomb forced the evacuation of two planes after they landed at Kuwait International Airport.
A Saudi Arabian Airlines flight coming from Jeddah and a Kuwait Airways flight coming from Damascus were evacuated on the runway and both taken away for inspection, Kuwait News Agency said.
One week earlier, two separate hoax bomb calls caused the evacuation of the American University of Kuwait and shopping centre Marina Mall, while a similar hoax threat also caused the evacuation of a hotel in the Messila area of Kuwait.
