Twenty-seven quarantined after suspected gas leak at Ankara airport

ANKARA, Feb 10 (AFP) - Twenty-seven people were quarantined as a precaution here Thursday after a suspected gas leak from a parcel in the Turkish capital, officials and media reports said.
A medical team, civil defense experts and firefighters were dispatched to the cargo department of the Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, at Ankara's Esenboga airport after workers got a suspicious smell from a package.
The compounds were quarantined and authorities were looking into the incident, Anatolia news agency reported.
Twenty-five of those quarantined were workers responsible for unloading cargo and the remaining two were people who said they were inside the plane, Sami Turkoglu, the chief physician of the hospital where they were quarantined, said.
"These people smelled something when the package opened. They became suspicious and decided to come to hospital," Turkoglu was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.
The emergency service of the hospital was also quarantined, he added.
The NTV news channel said the parcel had come from a foreign country and that it let off a smell resembling that of garlic.

02/10/2005 15:14 GMT - AFP