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A police robot searches one of the two cars stopped east of Naples, Fla. on Alligator Alley, the main east-west highway through the Everglades.
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Police in Florida detained three men and detonated a backpack found in their car on Friday after a woman in a Georgia restaurant overheard three men discussing details of what was considered a possible terrorist threat.
The Florida Highway Patrol closed off Alligator Alley, the main east-west highway across the Everglades in south Florida, after stopping two vehicles in connection with what authorities called a "potential domestic security concern." Live TV showed a bomb squad team blow up a backpack taken from one car.
U.S. law enforcement authorities have been on a heightened state of alert since Tuesday, when they announced they had identified a high risk of terrorist attack on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 hijacked aircraft assaults on the United States, in which more than 3,000 people were killed.
Florida police sources said the cars were stopped after Georgia police were tipped by a woman who said she overheard three men in a Georgia restaurant talking about explosives. One, she told police, said Americans had mourned on 9/11 (Sept. 11) and would mourn again on 9/13 (Sept. 13).
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation asked other police agencies to watch out for two vehicles driven by the three. The woman gave a detailed description of the vehicles, including license-plate details, according to a police source.
"We're taking it very seriously until we can eliminate the possibility of a threat," Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman E.J. Picolo said at the scene.
Live television broadcasts from helicopters hovering over the remote scene in the vast Everglades sawgrass plain showed two cars, one white, one black, stopped on the two-lane highway with doors open. At one point, a bomb-squad robot rolled up to the black car as police tried to determine if there were explosives inside.
Authorities said no explosives had been discovered by mid-morning on Friday.
The three men, reported by local media to be of Middle Eastern descent, had been identified and were being questioned but had not been charged, agents said. All three were believed to be in the United States legally, they said.
"They are being interviewed and will be interviewed to determine if this is a domestic security threat," Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman Larry Long said.
A sheriff's deputy in Florida's Collier County spotted the cars around midnight at the western toll plaza on Alligator Alley, a lonely stretch of highway running between Naples on the state's west coast and Fort Lauderdale on the east.
One of the cars went through the toll plaza without paying and the deputy chased and stopped them, police said. Bomb-sniffing dogs were immediately taken to the scene to search the vehicles for explosives.
"The dogs did alert on both vehicles," Picolo said. Local media reported that the law enforcement agencies at the scene, which included the FBI, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and numerous local police departments, were taking X-rays of the cars and their contents.
Federal authorities increased the nation's color-coded alert system this week to orange, the second highest level on a five-point scale, to indicate a high risk of terrorist attack. They closed 15 embassies on Tuesday and deployed anti-aircraft missiles around Washington as the United States prepared to mourn the Sept. 11 victims.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's southern district said some flight restrictions had been imposed over the scene
"There's a temporary slight restriction in place at request of Collier County Sheriff Department and that is within a 3 nautical mile radius of the location in question at and below 3,000 feet (1,000 metres)."
Only law enforcement aircraft under the direction of the Sheriff's Department could fly in the area, she said.