BRITAIN abruptly suspended all flights in and out of Kenya yesterday after receiving intelligence that Africa’s most notorious terrorist was planning to shoot down a UK airliner with missiles.

The Department for Transport said that the threat was imminent as Kenyan police and FBI agents mounted a huge manhunt for Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of al-Qaeda’s terrorist masterminds. Mohammed is on the FBI’s most wanted list for his part in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which more than 250 people died.

He is suspected of organising the car bombing of the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa last November, and the almost simultaneous missile attack on an Israeli charter plane as it left Mombasa airport.

Mohammed is believed to have slipped into Kenya from neighbouring Somalia, and there were fears that he might again attempt a double strike. Security was strengthened at the British High Commission and the US Embassy in Nairobi.

The US State Department urged Americans to defer non-essential travel to Kenya, giving warning of terrorist threats against Western targets, including civil aviation, that Kenya might be unable to stop. “Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, bombings or kidnappings,” it said.

More than 1,200 British holidaymakers in Kenya were told to contact the High Commission or travel agents if they wanted to come home. Arrangements are being made to move them by land to catch flights. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office told people to cancel trips to Kenya, but has no plans to evacuate Britons living there.

“We have established that he (Mohammed) is involved in a conspiracy for another attack,” Matthew Kabetu, the head of Kenya’s anti-terrorism forces, said. “We have been told there is something in the offing. It is a serious threat and we are desperate for information.” He said that Mohammed might be in Mombasa, where most British tourists are.

There was “no doubt” that an al-Qaeda cell was operating in Kenya, he said. But Kenyan ministers called the British ban an “extreme” action that played into the hands of would-be attackers.