Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) - A fake bomb accidentally left behind after a terror training exercise forced police to evacuate Manchester United's stadium and call off their season-ending game against Bournemouth in what was slammed as a "fiasco" by the city's mayor.
Army disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion in Old Trafford stadium toilets of the suspicious device, later revealed as a fake which was left there four days earlier by a private security company.
The stadium scare, which follows deadly attacks in Paris and Belgium over the past year, forced the evacuation of the 75,600-seat 'Theatre of Dreams' and the game's postponement until Tuesday evening.
The deeply embarrassing incident for United and the security firm was compounded by the vast expense and inconvenience suffered by the capacity crowd.
Among the disappointed fans were 3,500 Bournemouth supporters who were left facing a wasted round trip of 500 miles (800 kilometres) from the south coast.
Manchester, one of England's major cities, was also the setting last week for a series of mock terror attacks designed to test the responses of emergency services.
Tony Lloyd, Greater Manchester's mayor and the elected police and crime commissioner for the region, called the incident "outrageous" and called for a full inquiry.
"This fiasco caused massive inconvenience to supporters who had come from far and wide to watch the match, wasted the time of huge numbers of police officers and the army's bomb squad, and unnecessarily put people in danger, as evacuating tens of thousands of people from a football stadium is not without risk," he said in a statement.
