Two young people who tried to hijack an internal Ethiopian Airlines flight were shot dead on Sunday by national security agents on board, Radio Ethiopia reported.
One of the plane’s two stewards was slightly injured during the attempted hijacking, the official radio said quoting Ethiopian civil aviation security chief Bekretsion Habte.
The hijackers, aged 20 and 22, tried to seize a plane that had taken off from Bahir Dar in the northeast for Addis Ababa at 4:40 pm (1340 GMT) with 42 passengers on board. It finally completed its flight as scheduled, Habte said.
The youths, identified as Tesfaouni Yénéabat (22) and Tewodros Mekonen (20) both from Bahir Dar, tried to seize the Fokker 50 half an hour into the flight and were shot dead by national security agents, Habte said.
“The attempted hijacking failed, one person was slightly injured, one of the two stewards,” he told the radio.
“We do not know the two hijackers’ motives,” he added.
The pair, sitting in the centre of the aircraft, got up together after half an hour and one headed for the pilots’ cabin while the other moved toward the rear of the plane, shouting that they were hijacking it, Habte said.
They clashed with the stewards on the way. The security men then “took measures against the two men,” he said.
National television showed the bodies on its evening newscast. – AFP