An EgyptAir flight bound from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and
diverted to Cyprus on Tuesday, where the passengers and crew were
released and one suspected hijacker arrested following a standoff that
unfolded over nearly seven hours on the tarmac at Larnaca’s
international airport.
Although no one was harmed in the incident, the hijacking
underscores concerns about aviation security in Egypt, coming several
months after the downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula
that killed 224 people.
EgyptAir Flight 181, with 56 passengers and seven crew
members on board, was hijacked after taking off from Alexandria on
Tuesday morning, airline and government officials confirmed.
As of Tuesday afternoon, authorities in Egypt and Cyprus
were still trying to confirm what motivated the hijacker. Cyprus
President Nicos Anastasiades said the hijacking was not related to
terrorism, according to the Associated Press, but Egyptian officials did
not immediately rule it out. Egypt’s minister of civil aviation, Sherif
Fathy, said there had been no clear demands from the hijacker. It was
unclear whether the hijacker was wearing a belt rigged with explosives,
as EgyptAir initially said.
“We had to deal with the situation as a security threat
and operate as if he had a real bomb in order to keep all people on
board safe,” Fathy told state television following the end of the
standoff, in remarks reported by Egypt’s Al Ahram newspaper.
“We don’t know whether the equipment is true or real or
not,” Fathy said during a news conference in Cairo before the hijacker
was arrested. “We cannot take any risks except dealing with it as a
serious situation.”
The Airbus A320 took off from Alexandria’s Borg El Arab
Airport at 6:36 a.m. local time. The jet soon strayed from its flight
path, veering north toward Cyprus, and landed in Larnaca at 8:07 a.m.,
according to the flight-tracking site Flightaware.com. The plane was in the air for just 31 minutes.
After landing in Larnaca, the hijacker engaged in a
standoff with security forces on the ground at the airport, which
remained closed on Tuesday afternoon. By 10:46 a.m. local time, the
hijacker had released the majority of the passengers, with only the
flight crew and four foreign nationals still on board, according to
EgyptAir.
The tension continued until mid-afternoon, when the
remaining passengers and crew left the plane, including one who climbed
threw a cockpit window and jumped to the ground. The hijacker was
arrested around the same time, Cypriot officials said.
“Its over,” Cyprus’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet announcing the hijacker’s arrest.
In the immediate aftermath, the hijacker’s motives remained unclear. State media in Cyprus reported
that the hijacker might be motivated by a personal conflict and had
asked to contact his ex-wife. However, a separate report attributed to
Cyprus’ state media said the hijacker had issued a political demand for
the release of prisoners in Egypt. The reports could not be immediately
confirmed.
“It’s not something that has to do with terrorism,” said
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. Speaking at a news conference in
Cyprus, he chuckled as he responded to a reporter’s question about the
incident. “Always there is a woman involved,” he said.
The hijacking is the second major aviation security breach in Egypt in the past several months. In October, a Russian airliner
was brought down over the Sinai Peninsula, killing 224 people, mainly
foreign tourists. Militants affiliated with ISIS said they downed the
jet using an improvised bomb inside a beverage can smuggled on to the
plane. The downing of the Russian jet prompted a national review of
Egypt’s airport security conducted by the London-based consultancy
Control Risks.
The attack on the airliner bound from Sharm el-Sheikh to
St. Petersburg was one of the deadliest attacks claimed by the
Sinai-based franchise of the militant group ISIS. Egypt’s security
forces have battled insurgents in Sinai for years, with the militants
accelerating their following the military’s removal of Islamist
president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
The bombing of the Russian jet also dealt a devastating
blow to Egypt’s tourism industry which struggling to recover from years
of political unrest following the 2011 popular uprising that ousted
autocratic president Hosni Mubarak. The country’s tourism receipts fell
15 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year, according to the tourism ministry.
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