Saudi airline says US laptop ban lifted

Saudi Arabia’s national carrier say a US ban on laptops and tablets in the cabins of its US-bound planes has been lifted.

The kingdom’s civil aviation authorities informed Saudia that the ban had been lifted after a US team inspected security measures at airports in Riyadh and Jeddah, the airline’s spokesman Abdulrahman al-Taieb says.

Washington in March had issued the ban from 10 cities in the Middle East and Turkey over concerns Islamic State fighters and other extremists could hide bombs inside laptops.

Riyadh and Jeddah were the last two cities to have the ban lifted by US authorities. In recent weeks, airports in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey received clearance to lift the ban after implementing additional security measures.

— with agencies