Discovery of suspicious cargo prompts Philadelphia search of UPS planes

President Obama said Friday that two suspicious packages sent from Yemen and bound for the United States contained hidden explosives, discoveries that touched off a wide-scale terrorism alert including the search of two cargo planes at Philadelphia International Airport.

Obama said the packages, which were intercepted in the United Arab Emirates and England, had been addressed to "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago."

"The detail was specific and credible," said U.S. Rep. Charles Dent (R., Pa.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee on transportation security and infrastructure protection. "These were real threats."

Besides the two planes in Philadelphia, authorities searched a cargo plane at Newark Liberty International Airport and an Emirates commercial flight that two Air Force F-15 jets escorted to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. All four planes had cargo originating from Yemen, authorities said, but nothing of concern was reported found.

The Associated Press reported that Friday night, officials at JFK Airport investigated a British Airways flight from London, though an airline spokeswoman said passengers disembarked as normal after authorities met the flight. Earlier in the day, police also stopped and searched a UPS truck in Brooklyn, N.Y., but found nothing dangerous.

In Philadelphia, no inbound or outbound passenger flights were affected by the searches, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.

The UPS planes were taxied to a remote area of the airport to be inspected. Police in Newark and Philadelphia also evacuated the cargo terminals at both airports "out of an abundance of caution," according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The investigation was triggered by the discovery of a suspicious powder in a toner cartridge shipped from Yemen via UPS, a federal law enforcement source told The Inquirer. The cartridge, which had wires attached, was detected during an early-morning screening at East Midlands Airport north of London. The U.A.E. package reportedly was found at a FedEx facility in Dubai.

The device discovered in England "may be some sort of" improvised explosive device, a source told The Inquirer. U.S. officials told AP late Friday that the device may have contained PETN, the explosive used in an attempted attack on a commercial airliner on Christmas.