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| EgyptAir plane |
An EgyptAir plane was
hijacked on Tuesday while flying from the Egyptian Mediterranean coastal city
of Alexandria to the capital, Cairo, and later landed in Cyprus where some of
the women and children were allowed to get off the aircraft, according to
Egyptian and Cypriot officials.
Associated
Press report continues:
The
Airbus flight number MS181 had 81 passengers on board and was flying on a
regular route when the hijacking took place, the Egyptians said. It was not
immediately clear if one or more hijackers were involved.
Details
were sketchy and the motives and identities of the hijacker or hijackers were
also not known.
Shortly
after, the plane landed at the airport in the Cypriot coastal city of Larnaca,
Cypriot officials said, adding that there were suspicions of a bomb on board.
The
official later said the hijackers later allowed an unspecified number of women
and children to go free and some were disembarking.
A
second Cypriot official said there "seems like there's more than one
hijacker." He said there have been no demands made so far other than that
police vehicles move away from the aircraft.
All
the officials in Egypt and Cyprus spoke on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to speak to the media.
The hijacking, however,
will most likely bring to the fore again the question of security at Egyptian
airports, five months after a Russian aircraft crashed over Egypt's Sinai
Peninsula minutes after it took off from Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm
el-Sheikh. All 224 people on board were killed in the crash.
Russia later said
an explosive device brought down the aircraft and the extremist Islamic State
group said it downed the plane.
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