Serbian cops drop a bomb

Serbian police have admitted they may have accidentally put an explosive device on a plane to London.

It happened after an exercise to test sniffer dogs at Surcin airport in Belgrade went wrong, local daily Blic reported.

Officers had put explosives into luggage destined for Heathrow airport, as well as Paris, Milan, and Athens, and let sniffer dogs loose to find them.

The dogs found all the devices except one before police realised they had not marked the bags and could not find the final package or identify where it was headed.

The bags went off onto their respective planes and no one now knows where the explosives ended up.

Serbian authorities also failed to inform police in the UK or other countries about the incident, which took place on April 15, hoping no one would find out about the unofficial security exercise.

A spokesman for Serbian police told the newspaper: "It was a catastrophic mistake. The officers involved have broken the law. However the explosives were not large and did not have a detonator."

The truth only came out when a local paper investigated the sacking of a police officer over the incident.

One unnamed police officer who said he was furious about the incident told Blic: "What if the police in the country where the explosive ended up found it in a passenger's bag?

"The passenger would be arrested and most probably accused of being a terrorist. It makes our whole police force look bad."