Updated at 5:19 a.m. ET: A passenger jet flying from New York to Moscow made an unscheduled landing in Iceland on Thursday after a phone call was made claiming there was a bomb on board, a spokeswoman for Russian airline Aeroflot said.
Fridthor Eydal, the manager at Reykjavik’s Keflavik International Airport, told NBC News the Airbus A330 with 253 passengers on board landed safely at 6:27 a.m. (2:27 a.m. ET) and the plane had been evacuated.
“There was an anonymous call saying that there was an explosive device on the plane, which was already in the air,” spokesman Irina Dannenberg said.
The call was made to the New York City police, Dannenberg told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Passengers were going through standard security procedures on the ground in Reykjavik and would later be transported to a nearby hotel, local police told NBC News.
Police planned to search the aircraft later Thursday, authorities said.
NBC News’ staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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