Terror alert sparked by electronic cigarette

A PASSENGER using an electronic cigarette which gives off a vapour caused armed police to swoop on a coach in a terror alert which closed a motorway for more than four hours.

Armed officers, troops, firefighters and bomb disposal experts all went to the scene on the M6 toll road near Lichfield after a passenger reported seeing vapour coming from a man’s bag. A decontamination unit was set up and passengers were searched and held in a makeshift pen on the carriageway, but police found no crime had been committed.

The man was simply using an electronic cigarette, rather than the real thing, on the six-hour journey from Preston to London.