london City Airport reopens after chemical scare

The london City Airport has reopened after 27 people were treated and two taken to hospital in a "chemical incident".

london Fire Brigade said firefighters and police wearing protective equipment carried out two complete sweeps of the airport building, Xinhua news agency reported.

A spokesman said that the incident was declared over as: "No elevated readings were found and the building was ventilated, searched and declared safe."

The airport tweeted: "Airport has now reopened. We thank passengers for their patience, access to terminal will be staggered and disruption to flights expected."

The Sky news channel quoted london Ambulance's Assistant Director of Operations Paul Gibson as saying: "We were called at 4.11 p.m. to reports of an incident at london City Airport."

"We sent a number of resources to the scene including two single responders in cars, four ambulance crews, an incident response officer and our Hazardous Area Response Team (medics specially trained to treat people in hazardous situations)," said Gibson.

"We are treating ... patients at the scene for difficulty in breathing, two patients have been taken to hospital," according to Gibson.

The report said that the cause of the apparent breathing difficulties is still not known.