Two more hostages have been released by two men who hijacked a Greek bus with 25 passengers on board early on Wednesday, Greek television reported.
The two were freed at 2.40pm local time, Greece’s NET public television said.
The private Ant1 station showed images of a woman leaving the bus. It said the other hostage freed was a man.
Police earlier parked buses across the road to block television crews and photographers’ view of the drama.
The armed hijackers had earlier released two men and three women, one of whom told the private Greek radio station Skai that a ransom demand of one million euros had been made.
The five were released nearly six hours after the bus was hijacked at 5.50am by the two armed men who entered the bus and fired shots into the roof of the vehicle.
The released hostages were taken to a police command centre near the bus, which police said had 26 passengers aboard when it was hijacked.
The bus was hijacked on Wednesday by the two men, reportedly Russians, who demanded to be taken to Athens airport, police and government officials said.
One of the hijackers told a Greek television station he wanted to go to Russia. State-run NET television said representatives of the Russian embassy are on the scene.
Government sources confirmed the two hijackers were demanding that a driver take them to the airport, but could not confirm they were Russian. Police called them ”foreigners”.
”We can’t say with any certainty at this time,” about their nationalities, said a government source who asked not to be named.
According to relatives of hostages who spoke to television and radio stations, both men apparently spoke Greek.
It was initially reported that the hijackers were Albanian.
There are hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in Greece, including many from Albania and the former Soviet Union.
The orange-and-blue bus was surrounded by police and ambulances at a stop about 17km from the city centre on the outskirts of eastern Athens. Black-clad police special forces, some carrying armoured shields, were crouching near the bus. Snipers were on nearby rooftops and police parked a van in front of the bus to prevent it from driving away.
At least two shots had been fired at police who arrived at the scene shortly after the takeover, while several shots have been heard from inside the bus since it came to a standstill.
Police negotiators were on the scene, police said.
The hijackers were armed with at least one shotgun but also claimed to have explosives.
”Tell them to move the van from in front of us or we will blow up the bus,” the man said in Greek to Athens’s Alpha television station. He had a slight accent.
”Tell them to get all the police away from here. We want to go to the airport and fly to Russia. All passengers will get off there. We haven’t harmed anyone, but if the driver is delayed I said that I will strike.”
Except for the demand to be taken to the airport, it was unclear why the men hijacked the bus.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Yakovenko said there was no confirmation the hijackers were Russian.
”As soon as one of the Greek radio stations announced that the terrorists who had seized a bus wanted to fly to Russia, the Russian embassy in Athens immediately contacted the Greek police and is maintaining close contact with them,” Yakovenko said.
He added that ”the police do not confirm the information that there might be Russian-speaking people among the terrorists insofar as they do not have any information on this account … At the same time, it is known that they speak bad Greek”.
The hijacking is a first test for a Greek police force that underwent intensive training to deal with such situations during the Olympic Games. It is also the fifth time a bus has been hijacked since 1999.
The bus driver, a ticket collector and another passenger managed to escape. The driver took the bus keys with him.
”I stopped the bus, I opened the doors in order for the people to come out, I opened my door as well and I pulled one women out. We managed to get out three people. There are 25 people inside,” a man identified only as the driver told state-run NET television.
The bus was on a route from the town of Marathon, east of Athens, to the city centre when it was hijacked just before dawn at a stop in the suburb of Geraka.
The bus stop was on a highway that was renovated for the Olympic Games and used for the Marathon race, the 42km course from ancient Marathon to central Athens.
Greek police have dealt with similar situations in the past. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP