Authorities have arrested a man after he boarded an empty Mauritania Airlines plane that was on the tarmac at Nouakchott International Airport and threatened to set it on fire, the government agency reported on Thursday.
There were no passengers on board at the time of the incident and it was not immediately clear how the man managed to break into airport security, according to an airport official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
The unidentified man who entered the plane spoke English and thought he was a foreigner living in the West African nation. The government news agency said he had identified himself as an American who “had problems with Mauritania.”
The security breach is the first of its kind since Nouakchott’s airport was inaugurated in 2016, officials said.
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