Spanish police are searching for 14 people who ran from a commercial plane after an emergency landing – which was forced by a woman ‘faking’ that she was about to give birth.

The Pegasus Airlines flight, from Morocco to Turkey, landed at Barcelona’s El Prat airport on Wednesday afternoon after the woman claimed she was going into labour.

Authorities say that, once the plane touched down, a group of 28 people exited and “tried to flee”.

Police managed to stop half of the group, but 14 escaped officers at the airport and remain at large.

The woman, who doctors later found was pregnant but not about to give birth, was arrested on suspicion of public disorder offences.

Spanish authorities said five of the people who were caught agreed to be put back on the flight, from the Moroccan city of Casablanca to Istanbul.

The rest are being processed for non-admission to Spain.

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According to authorities, it is expected they, along with the woman who allegedly faked giving birth, will be put on another Pegasus flight out of the country.

The Spanish government’s office did not reveal the nationalities of the passengers.

A total of 228 passengers had been on the jet, which eventually landed in Istanbul at 1.10pm local time (10.10am UK time) after a delay of over three hours, according to Flightradar.com.

The plane involved was reportedly an Airbus A321 and the flight was PC652.

It comes after a similar incident more than a year ago in which a group of passengers flying from Casablanca to Istanbul fled their plane on to the runway in the Spanish island of Mallorca following an emergency landing under a false pretext.

Out of the 24 who disembarked, 12 of them were arrested, while 12 others escaped.

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