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US asks France to up security

July 4, 2014

At the request of the US, the French civil aviation authority has announced it will increase security measures. This week, the US heightened measures to prevent an attack, but declined to name a specific threat.

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Flughafen Paris Sicherheitscheck
Image: FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/Getty Images

US-bound flights from France would be subjected to more scrutiny, according to the French aviation authority on Friday. It urged passengers to arrive early and expect longer waiting periods to pass through security.

The measures would "be carried out in a way to limit as much as possible inconvenience to passengers, however, delays are possible," the French civil aviation authority said.

The new procedures would remain in effect for "the summer period," it added.

On Thursday, US officials announced they would require some international airports to comply with the new safety precautions.

They have not provided few details regarding the airports and countries which fall under the heightened security, nor have they specified what triggered the need to scrutinize passengers and their belongings more closely.

New threats from Syria and Yemen

New threats are thought to be emanating from several ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Bombmakers from the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), are believed to be cooperating to develop explosives that could avoid detection by current airport screening systems.

On Sunday, US President Barack Obama warned that "battle-hardened" European jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq threaten the United States.

These combatants "have a European passport. They don't need visas to get into the United States," he told the program "This Week."

"We're targeting certain airports abroad... based on real time intelligence," a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told AFP news agency. The new measures would be designed in a way to avoid creating major hassles for travelers, without signaling to potential terrorists what those steps would be, officials said.

"Information about specific enhancements is sensitive as we do not wish to divulge information about specific layers of security to those who would do harm," said a second DHS official, who asked not to be named.

kms/rc (AP, AFP, Reuters)