WASHINGTON, Oct 5 — The United States confirmed yesterday that it has withdrawn all B-1 bombers from the British airbase of RAF Fairford, with officials telling US media that the move was linked to “new threats.”
Police were called to the base in southwest England on September 27 after a local farmer reported a group of men with several vans engaged in “suspicious” activity.
The scare prompted a counter-terrorism probe and forced evacuations at 85 homes near the airbase, which was used by the United States to launch strikes on Iran.
Investigators did not find any explosives in the vans, but “a quantity of petrol was recovered,” according to counter-terrorism police.
A statement from a Pentagon official yesterday said “we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States.”
