Overjoyed passengers from a hijacked Sudanese jet returned home to delighted families on Thursday, having feared they would die at the hands of gunmen who threatened to blow up the plane.
Two hijackers of the passenger plane surrendered to Libyan authorities at a remote desert airport on Wednesday after freeing all passengers on board, almost 24 hours after the drama began in Darfur.
”The hijackers surrendered without any violence and the crew are safe and sound,” said a Libyan official from the World War II-era military airport in Kufra, an oasis in the south-east of the North African country.
About 150 loved ones gathered at the airport in Khartoum, ululating and whistling across the festive beat of sufi music to greet the freed passengers who landed at the ill-fated flight’s original destination.
”I’m very happy, thank God, I’m very happy,” said Ishaq Abdallah Yahiya, a slightly dazed 25-year-old student from South Darfur.
Passengers said the hijackers, armed with two small guns, claimed there were explosives on board and threatened to blow up the Boeing 737.
”He [one of the hijackers] said no one should move from their place. ‘If anybody moves, we’ll blow the plane, you all become nothing, we become nothing, everything becomes nothing’,” said Yahiya.
The two attackers, who claimed to be from Sudan’s conflict-ridden region of Darfur, hijacked the plane on Tuesday shortly after take-off from Darfur’s biggest city of Nyala.
They surrendered several hours after negotiations led to the release of all 87 passengers from the Sun Air plane, which was forced to land in Kufra on Tuesday evening after it ran short of fuel.
But they initially refused to release the eight-member crew, demanding that the plane be refuelled for a flight to Paris, an official said.
‘I was so hysterical’
One passenger said conditions in the searing heat became unbearable after the air-conditioning broke down, as people vomited and children urinated, with a stench of rotting meat from passengers’ luggage overwhelming.
”We couldn’t move. We couldn’t even scratch our heads, we couldn’t go to the toilet, no water, nothing,” said another passenger.
”I was afraid … They said they had explosives,”’ he added.
The hijackers, who had refused to talk directly with Libyan officials, said they belong to the Sudanese Liberation Army, whose exiled leader, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, lives in Paris, according to airport director Khaled Saseya.
Libyan authorities have still not been able to confirm the identities of the hijackers and an investigation was being launched, an official said, adding that a 20-strong Sudanese delegation was in Kufra.
Sudan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadiq condemned the hijacking and called on the Libyan authorities to deport the ”terrorists” to Khartoum.
”I was so hysterical. I thought it was a disaster,” said Diana Adam, the 15-year-old daughter of one official from a former Darfur rebel movement that signed a 2006 peace agreement with the Khartoum government in 2006.
”Now I’m very happy,” she said, smiling and being hugged by her father.
Libya’s civil aviation director, Mohammed Shlibaq, said that two Egyptian members of the United Nations-led Darfur peacekeeping force, two Ethiopians and a Ugandan were among the passengers, the official Jana news agency reported.
Several Sudanese officials were on board, including the tribal affairs adviser at the Provisional Authority in Darfur, Yaqub al-Malik Mohamed Yaqub.
No Darfur movement has publicly claimed responsibility for the hijacking.
Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur denied the hijacking was the work of his Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) faction, one of two Darfur movements that first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in 2003.
SLA commander Ibrahim al-Hillo suggested the hijackers could be Nur sympathisers.
The SLA has fractured into multiple groups over the more than five years of war in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
The UN says up to 300 000 people have died and more than 2,2-million fled their homes since war in Darfur erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10 000 have been killed.
Ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power. — AFP
