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Libyan Airliner Is Hijacked and Diverted to Malta Libyan Airliner Is Hijacked and Diverted to Malta
(35 minutes later)
CAIRO — A Libyan airliner carrying more than 100 people and bound for the capital, Tripoli, was hijacked Friday morning and forced to land in Malta, although many passengers were being allowed to leave the plane, the Maltese prime minister said. CAIRO — A Libyan airliner carrying more than 100 people and bound for the capital, Tripoli, was hijacked Friday morning and forced to land in Malta, although more than half of the passengers were later allowed to leave the plane, the Maltese prime minister said.
At least one hijacker was on board the Airbus A320 and threatened to detonate an explosive device, according to Maltese news reports. There were two hijackers on board the Airbus A320 and they had threatened to detonate an explosive device, according to airline officials and Maltese news reports. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of Malta said that the island’s security services were “coordinating operations.”
The flight, operated by the state-owned Afriqiyah Airways of Libya, took off from the southern Libyan city of Sebha and was scheduled to fly to Tripoli, the capital, which is on the coast. It was diverted to Malta, about 200 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from Tripoli.The flight, operated by the state-owned Afriqiyah Airways of Libya, took off from the southern Libyan city of Sebha and was scheduled to fly to Tripoli, the capital, which is on the coast. It was diverted to Malta, about 200 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from Tripoli.
“First group of passengers, consisting of women and children, being released now,” Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of Malta wrote on Twitter. That message was followed soon after by further posts saying that two groups of 25 passengers had been allowed to disembark. “First group of passengers, consisting of women and children, being released now,” Mr. Muscat wrote on Twitter, before later writing that 65 passengers had disembarked. Live footage from the Malta airport showed a group of women and children leaving the plane.
Earlier, Mr. Muscat said that the flight had landed and that local security services were “coordinating operations.” He said there were 111 people on the plane, including 82 men, 28 women and one infant. Mr. Muscat also posted on Twitter that there were 111 passengers on the plane, including 82 men, 28 women and one infant. Afriqiyah officials confirmed that figure, adding that seven crew members were also on board.
The Times of Malta posted a short video of an Afriqiyah plane parked on a runway, watched by soldiers in two jeeps. The identity and affiliation of the hijackers were unknown, but a senior Afriqiyah Airways official said that one of them had demanded a visa for Europe, suggesting the hijacking had not been directed by a militant group.
The identity or number of hijackers, or the nature of their demands, was not immediately clear. Libya is in the throes of a complex civil conflict involving multiple armed groups. “We feared he might be one of those ideological people, but that seems not to be the case,” said the official, Captain Abdelatif Ali Kablan, the chairman of the airline, speaking by telephone from Tripoli.
This month, fighters allied with the United Nations-backed unity government ousted Islamic State fighters from their stronghold in the coastal city of Surt. It was the second hijacking this year of a passenger jet in the Mediterranean region. In March, an Egyptian man commandeered an EgyptAir domestic flight en route to Cairo and forced it to land in Cyprus, where he demanded the release of political prisoners in Egypt and a meeting with his estranged wife.
The crisis ended hours later with the surrender of the hijacker, Seif Eldin Mustafa, who turned out to be wearing a fake explosives vest fashioned from mobile phone cases that had been taped together.
In September, a court in Cyprus ordered the deportation of Mr. Mustafa, 59, to Egypt. His lawyers are resisting the order and seeking asylum for Mr. Mustafa, claiming he could be tortured if sent home.