Colombo, Sept. 8 (Reuters): One woman died and more than a dozen people were hospitalised today after they fled a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight before take off in a bomb scare Sri Lankan police suspect was triggered by a hoax call.

Hospital officials said they believed the woman who died had suffered a fracture and subsequent shock, while other passengers had suspected fractures after jumping out of emergency exits in panic as the plane sat on the tarmac at Colombo airport.

“Only tomorrow morning we will be doing the post-mortem,” said Dr S.C. Wickramasinghe, who runs Negombo Hospital north of the capital where four other injured were being treated. “We think it may be a cervical fracture. A vertebra may have broken.” “Some people are badly injured,” she added.

Nurses treated dozens of other passengers, many of them Sri Lankan nationals, at the airport itself for minor injuries. Some had bloody noses, others cuts on their faces, elbows and legs.

There were no details on the dead woman's nationality, but airline officials said the Boeing 747, carrying 452 passengers and crew, had been due to fly to Jeddah. Bomb squad officers were checking the plane, but had found nothing.