An explosion inside a plane at Istanbul airport has injured three people hours before US President Mr George W. Bush was due to fly out of the city from the same location, Turkish police have said.
They said the Turkish Airlines plane, on a domestic flight from the western port of Izmir, was being cleaned after landing in Istanbul .
Turkey's biggest city is hosting a NATO summit attended by Bush and dozens of other world leaders, and security is extremely tight. Bush was due to leave Turkey from a different terminal later today.
Police said they could not immediately say if the blast was caused by a bomb.
A Turkish Airlines spokesman said three cleaners boarded the plane at 12:30 p.m. (9.30 a.m. GMT) after passengers had disembarked.
"One of the workers picked up a wallet from the ground and there was an explosion. He lost a finger and the two others were injured but only slightly," the spokesman said.
A series of small explosions in the run-up to the NATO summit, one of which killed four people including the bomber, has left nerves on edge. They were blamed on leftist groups that have long been active in Turkey.
Istanbul still bears the scars of four massive suicide bombings last November by a group linked to al Qaeda, in which more than 60 people were killed and hundreds injured.
