Belgium’s Liege airport temporarily halted again due to drone sighting

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By Alessandro Parodi and Benoit Van Overstraeten

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Belgium’s Liege airport has resumed flights after a temporary halt due to a drone sighting, the country’s air traffic control service said on Friday in the second such incident this week.

The Skeyes air traffic control service said it received a report of a drone being spotted over the airport around 06:30 GMT, leading to a closure of the airport for about 30 minutes.

“We have to take every report seriously”, Kurt Verwilligen, a spokesperson for the service said. He added flights had resumed.

Drones spotted flying over airports in the capital Brussels and in Liege, in the country’s east, forced on Tuesday the diversion of many incoming planes and the grounding of some due to depart.

Sightings of drones over airports and military bases have become a constant problem in Belgium in recent days, and have caused major disruptions across Europe in recent months.

They have forced temporary closures of airports in several countries including Sweden on Thursday. Some officials have blamed the incidents on “hybrid warfare” by Russia. Moscow has denied any connection with the incidents.

The Belgian government called an emergency meeting of key government ministers and security chiefs on Thursday to address what the defence minister called a coordinated attack.

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)