Spy drones to monitor Olympic sailing venue: report

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will deploy unmanned aircraft over Olympic co-host city Qingdao to watch for "suspicious activities", in the country's first known use of drone planes, state media said on Friday.

China regards terrorism as the biggest threat to the Games starting on August 8, and has introduced a raft of measures in recent months to boost security. Qingdao, a port city in eastern Shandong province, will host sailing events.

Armed police tested one of the drones in Shandong provincial capital Jinan on Thursday, remotely piloting it to peek into a third-floor office building, the Shanghai Daily said.

The drones, which cost almost 1 million yuan ($146,000) each, "will watch for suspicious activities and transmit photos and videos back to command stations," the paper said.

China, which claims to have already foiled terrorist plots targeting athletes and foreigners during the Games, has deployed a battery of surface-to-air missile launchers a kilometer south of Beijing's "Bird's Nest" National Stadium and other showpiece venues.

The country has said it hopes to secure the Games for less than a third of the Athens bill by relying on its own armed forces, but rights groups accuse it of using the potential terrorist threat as an excuse to suppress internal dissent.

($1=6.851 Yuan)

(Writing by Ian Ransom; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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