Milan airport shut by hare plague

Officials have been forced to suspend flights into an airport in the Italian city of Milan due to a plague of hares.

The animals invaded the runways at Milan's Linate Airport - and affected the operation of vital equipment.

Airport bosses are baffled as to why the hare population at Linate has risen so dramatically in the past few months.




Whatever the cause, the result has been chaos - in the past two weeks alone, two hares have ended up beneath the wheels of charter planes.

Things have become so serious that officials took the unusual step of closing Linate for three hours - from first light on Sunday - while a team of local wildlife experts try to catch the 80 or so hares that have been causing the problem.

The hares were taken to nature reserves around Milan - though officials have warned that they have not ruled out a cull if this fails.

With news video.