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A family was forced off a flight in the US after a terror scare was sparked because one of them was watching the news on his phone.

The incident was one of a spate of safety alerts hitting flights and airports in the US on Tuesday, four days after the massacre in Paris.

Four people, who “appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent” according to local reports, were ejected from the plane after a fellow passenger alerted cabin crew to the man’s “suspicious behaviour”.

The passenger, a mother, grabbed her young daughter and dashed to the back of the plane where she reported the man using his phone, witnesses said.

Police said he had simply been watching a clip of a news report as the Chicago-bound flight was taxiing along the runway at the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Sgt Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority, told the Chicago Tribune: “One of the three males was sitting next to a female passenger and apparently he was watching a media report. I don’t know of what nature it was, but given current events, I can imagine what it was.

"Being in her shoes, I’m guessing that combined with what she saw or heard created some concerns for her.

"She told the flight crew, which was most likely a flight attendant, and they spoke to the captain and the captain made the choice to go back to the terminal.”

All passengers and luggage were then cleared from the plane, which eventually took off three hours later.

The four people forced off the flight were released without charge about five hours later.

US airports are on high alert for terrorist threats amid a string of incidents on Tuesday.

Two Air France flights, which had taken off from Washington and Los Angeles, bound for Paris were diverted after anonymous bomb threats were made from the ground.

The planes landed in Salt Lake City and Halifax, Canada, where passengers were evacuated and interviewed by the FBI and Canadian police. Authorities also searched the aircraft but found “no credible threat”.

A separate scare saw a bomb squad called to investigate a “suspicious” piece of luggage at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.