ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's army closed Islamabad International Airport to commercial flights for two and half hours before dawn on Friday for movement of military equipment, officials at the aviation regulatory body said.``It was a unscheduled closure...and there was some very intense movement of military hardware,'' a senior official of the Civil Aviation Authority told Reuters. (Read photo caption below)
He said the airport was sealed off from 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. local time.
An official of state-run Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) said two of its scheduled flights to Islamabad were diverted to Karachi because of the closure.
Saulat Raza, director of the military's Inter-Services Public Relations department, declined to comment and it was not clear if the closure was linked to possible U.S. retaliation on Afghanistan for the terror attacks on Washington and New York.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Pakistani soldiers man a road block near the U.S. embassy in Islamabad September 13, 2001. Pakistan military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, under pressure for backing Afghanistan's Taliban movement, pledged his full cooperation in the fight against terrorism. (David Loh/Reuters)