MIAMI – Federal officials say a passenger has been taken into custody after screeners detected something suspicious in a checked bag at Miami International Airport.
A statement by the Transportation Security Administration says its investigators, a Miami-Dade police bomb squad and other law enforcement agencies were on the scene.
The federal statement says four of the six Miami airport termianals had been evacuated and airport roadways also were closed as a safety precaution.
The statement does not give further details about what a TSA found at about 9 p.m. Thursday.
Authorites say the evacuation continued early Friday and urge anyone with departures from Miami to check with their carrier.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
MIAMI (AP) — A bomb squad investigated a report of a suspicious package after police evacuated four of six concourses at Miami International Airport for several hours on the eve of the Labor Day travel period, an airport spokesman said Friday.
Police bomb squad authorities went about 9:30 p.m. Thursday to a Customs area of Concourse E near an international arrivals area when the initial report came in, airport spokesman Greg Chin told The Associated Press.
He said between 100 to 200 passengers were evacuated while police investigated and that flights overnight were allowed to use parts of two concourses still open.
Chin declined to elaborate on the nature of the suspicious item and referred all calls to the Miami-Dade police. Police did not immediately return repeated telephone calls for comment.
"I'm still not sure how many flights came in during this time, but any that did were relocated to the eastern or western ends of the airport," Chin said early Friday.
He said parts of Concourse D and J remain open to flights, but all four of the middle concourses in the 2-mile-long airport complex remained closed to the public for hours.
"We're just waiting hopefully for an all clear," Chin said.
He said most of the passengers still in the concourses were initially taken outside.
"We had to have passengers moved out on the curbside," he said, adding most of those returning to the build were allowed into the areas of the two concourses still open.

(CBS/ AP) A senior law enforcement official says the scientist detained at Miami International Airport because of a suspicious item in his luggage had once been charged with illegally transporting bubonic plague.

The FBI released the scientist after screeners spotted a metal canister in his luggage that looked like a pipe bomb and led to a 7-hour airport evacuation, reports CBS station WFOR in Miami.

No charges were filed against the 70-year-old man, who a senior U.S. government official has identified as Dr. Thomas Butler. Butler was allowed to continue his trip shortly after noon on Friday.

Butler is an American born scientist who specializes in infectious diseases and has been known to work closely with cholera and the bubonic plague.

He served two years in prison for illegally transporting samples of the plague and was later forced out of his teaching position at Texas Tech University. Butler was convicted in 2003 on 47 counts of illegal transportation of a biohazard material.

He is currently teaching at Al Faisal University in Saudia Arabia.