Suspect held after bomb threats disrupted flights

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A man has been detained by police in south China's Guangdong Province in connection with bomb threats that disrupted five flights to Shenzhen on Wednesday.

 The suspected hoax caller (center) is escorted by plainclothes officers after his detention.

The suspected hoax caller (center) is escorted by plainclothes officers after his detention.

The 26-year-old unemployed migrant from Inner Mongolia confessed he made six hoax calls to airports in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an and Lanzhou, police in Shenzhen said.

"The man surnamed Wang said he wanted to take revenge on society because he had been punished many times after committing crimes," police said.

Wang was caught in a rented room in Changping Town at 3:15am, just 19 hours after the calls that had disrupted five flights operated by Juneyao, Shenzhen and China Eastern airlines.

He was detained on charges that he made up and deliberately distributed terrorism information.

Hoax callers face up to five years in prison but the term can be extended in cases involving injuries.

The maximum sentence is 15 years for an offender whose actions pose a serious threat to air safety.

The airlines received threatening calls between 8 and 9:30am that there could be bombs on their flights to Shenzhen in south Chinese.

Four flights were already in the air and two were told to return while another two were diverted to other airports. The fifth flight had not yet taken off.

A number of passengers were slightly injured when they evacuated from a Shenzhen Airlines' flight which was diverted to an airport in Guilin in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Some passengers insisted on taking luggage with them and that had caused the injuries, an airline official said.

The official said crew members had deployed the slides so that all the passengers could leave the plane in the fastest possible time.

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