Spanish police arrest Air Mauritania hijacker |
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Published
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Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:27
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MADRID (XFN-ASIA) - Spanish police arrested an armed Moroccan man who had hijacked an Air Mauritania aircraft with 79 people on board and forced it to land in the Canary Islands.'The hijacking finished in a satisfactory manner,' Canary Islands police chief Jose Segura said on Spanish national radio, adding that the 71 passengers and eight crew members had been freed.The hijacker, who was carrying two guns, did not resist arrest, Segura said.He had been overpowered by crew members as the aircraft landed in Las Palmas.The hijacker was seeking to take the plane to France, a source close to the Spanish government told Agence France-Presse, adding that the man had no link to terrorism.He 'wanted to force the pilot to fly to France. He (the pilot) answered that there was not enough fuel,' said one airport security official.According to a report on Moroccan television station El Ayoun, several of the passengers were 'lightly wounded.''The passengers were lightly wounded while trying to gain control over the hijacker who was carrying a gun,' El Ayoun reported, quoting airline attendant Mouloud Kourina, who was at the Las Palmas airport waiting to start his shift onboard the hijacked plane.The plane, a Boeing 737, had taken off from Nouakchott at 5.40 pm (1740 GMT). It was scheduled to stopover in Nouadhibou, Mauritania's second city in the north of the country, within 45 minutes of flying out of the Mauritanian capital, but was diverted.It tried to land at Dakhla, a small coastal city in Western Sahara, about 1,770 kilometers south of Rabat, but was refused permission, security forces sources said.'They wanted to refuel in Dakhla, but the Moroccan authorities refused. They then went to Las Palmas to re-fuel,' with plans to proceed to France after that, one source said.The Las Palmas airport remained on alert after the hijacking, Spanish national radio reported.afp/mas
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