Chinese airlines cancelled direct flights to destinations in the Middle East Tuesday over security concerns linked to a looming US military response to this month's terror attacks.
China Southern Airlines said its three weekly flights from Beijing to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates via Urumqi, the capital of China's far western Xinjiang region, would be cancelled from Wednesday.
The flight would instead terminate at Urumqi, said an airline official who identified himself as Li.
Li said the decision had been made by the country's aviation authorities for "security reasons" and that flights would only resume when the situation was considered safe again.
Xinjiang has a majority Muslim population and has experienced its own waves of bombings and other violent incidents in recent years which have been blamed by Beijing on Islamic separatists.
Another national carrier, Air China, said it had cancelled its sole Middle Eastern route from Beijing to Kuwait.
Company official Zhang Ting said the decision was also taken for security reasons.
The country's third main international airline, China Eastern Airlines, said it did not have any flights to Middle Eastern destinations.
The global aviation industry has been thrown into crisis since hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. on September 11 causing an estimated 7,000 deaths.
Middle Eastern routes have been affected amid expectations of an imminent US-led strike against the forces of Osama bin Laden, the Afghanistan-based prime suspect in the attacks -- BEIJING (AFP)
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