Swiss shopping centre evacuated after bomb threat

– World news selected by Gazette editors for Phuket’s international community

PHUKET: A Swiss shopping centre in a town near the northern city of Basel was evacuated on Tuesday due to a bomb threat, police said.

An anonymous caller threatened to detonate a bomb in the underground garage of the shopping centre in Pratteln,Basel-Landschaft.

The call was placed to Mobil Pfister, a shop in the Media-Markt building of the Gruessen centre at 1220 GMT, police official Roland Walter said, by a person speaking broken German with a man’s voice.

Visitors were evacuated from both the building, which houses a number of other shops, and the garage. Police began searching the premises at 1330 GMT with tracker dogs and had found no explosives by around 1500 GMT.

Much of Europe has been on heightened alert since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed more than 100 people.

— Phuket Gazette Editors