A domestic Sudanese passenger plane has been hijacked after leaving Khartoum by an unknown gunman who diverted the plane to Chad’s capital, Ndjamena, an airline official said on Wednesday.
”There are 103 people on board,” said Ahmed Salih, commercial manager of the Air West airline that operates the Boeing 737 plane.
”It was hijacked at 9am [local time] and will arrive in Ndjamena at 11am,” he said.
Another source at Khartoum airport said the plane was hijacked while in the air, 30 minutes after taking off.
The plane was headed to el-Fasher, the main town in Sudan’s western Darfur region, he added.
Salih said: ”So far there is one hijacker with an AK-47 machine gun.”
He added there were no other demands made by the hijacker, whose identity is unknown.
It was not clear how the hijacker got on board the plane with a weapon, but Sudanese security is often lax, especially on internal flights.
In 2004 Eritreans seeking asylum hijacked a plane travelling from Libya to Eritrea and forced it to land in Khartoum airport. Sudan eventually granted the hijackers political asylum. — Reuters