EgyptAir Flight Hijacked and Diverted to Cyprus
CAIRO — Most of the passengers on an EgyptAir plane that was hijacked and forced to land at Larnaca airport in Cyprus were released on Tuesday, the airline and Egyptian officials said, after the jet was diverted during its flight to Cairo from Alexandria.
Although the hijacker claimed to be wearing a suicide belt and threatened to detonate it, officials in Egypt and Cyprus said they believed he may have been motivated by personal factors rather than by terrorism.
Egyptian state news media identified the hijacker as an employee of the University of Alexandria. Although the university’s website lists a professor of veterinary medicine with the name published in the reports, BBC Arabic reported that the professor said he was merely a passenger on the flight and was not the hijacker.
The president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, said that the hijacking was “not something that has to do with terrorism.”
A Cypriot official told The Associated Press that the hijacker had given negotiators the name of a woman on the island whom he wanted to contact, and an Egyptian security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the developing situation, said that the hijacker’s former wife is from Cyprus.
In a statement on its Facebook page, EgyptAir identified the flight as MS181 and said it had been carrying 56 passengers, 7 crew members and one EgyptAir security officer. The airline had said earlier that there had been 81 people on the plane.
Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, the Egyptian civil aviation minister, Sharif Fathi, said four crew members and three passengers were still on board, along with the hijacker.
Passengers who disembarked from a hijacked EgyptAir flight on Tuesday gathered at the airport in Larnaca, Cyprus. George Michael/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Hosni Hassan, a senior official at Borg el-Arab Airport in Alexandria, said by telephone that a majority of the passengers were Egyptian but that the passengers also included citizens from seven other countries, including Belgium, Greece, Italy and the United States.
Video from the airport showed passengers walking down the stairs from the plane, an Airbus A320, and walking a short distance across the tarmac at Larnaca International Airport before boarding a bus.
Aviation security in Egypt has been under sharp scrutiny since a Russian airliner crashed shortly after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh on Oct. 31, killing all 224 on board.
A local affiliate of the Islamic State said it had brought down that plane with a bomb. Russia and Egypt have attributed the crash to terrorism, although an Egyptian-led investigation has yet to publish its findings.
(Source : nytimes.com)
Post A Comment
No comments :