No one was injured when a fire broke out in a baggage conveyor belt system at the King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) on Monday.

Passengers contacted by Arab News said that the fire was possibly caused by some “friction or by the massive loads of luggage that was ferried by the poorly-maintained conveyor belt at a busy flight time.”

Khaled Al-Khaibary, a spokesman of the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), refused to speak to Arab News, saying he was “busy in a meeting.” Abdullah Al-Azhar, a spokesman of the national carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines, advised this reporter to contact GACA for any information about the fire at the airport.

However, an informed source at the KKIA said that “a conveyor belt at KKIA Terminal 2 caught fire, leading to the closure of the operation of the south conveyor system altogether.”

“The north conveyor belt, which was closed for maintenance at the time of fire at the terminal, was then made operational,” said the source, adding that the north belt has been under maintenance for quite some time.

It was not clear until Sunday night whether some delays in flights occurred due to fire at KKIA. A Delhi-bound Air India flight AI-924 was delayed by several hours on Sunday. This is not the first time that the poorly-maintained baggage conveyors caused problems for passengers at the airport in the Kingdom. Last year in July, hundreds of outbound Saudia passengers were left stranded at KKIA for several hours because of a faulty conveyor belt.