Two hijackers surrendered to Turkish security forces at Antalya Airport in southern Turkey on Saturday and no problem occurred in this incident.
 
Two hijackers surrendered to Turkish security forces at Antalya Airport in southern Turkey on Saturday and no problem occurred in this incident, local private NTV channel reported.

A passenger plane, operated by the private Turkish airline company AtlasJet, was hijacked when it was heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus early on Saturday morning.

NTV reported that one hijacker was Palestinian and the other was Turk.

The hijackers forced open the passenger entry door of the plane and threatened authorities to harm crew members, demanding to negotiate with authorities by pledging to release elderly passengers and children, said the report.

 

A passenger from the hijacked Turkish aircraft is carried to the hospital in Antalya. Two men claiming to be Al-Qaeda members who hijacked a Turkish plane surrendered at an airport in southern Turkey after hours of negotiations.

The semi-official Anatolia news agency reported earlier that several passengers were slightly injured when they were trying to flee from the hijacked plane.

It added that the passengers would be sent to Istanbul by another plane at 14:30 local time (1130 GMT).

A total of 136 passengers and six crew members were on board the Turkish plane when the two hijackers attempted to storm into the cockpit some 20 to 25 minutes after the plane took off.

Although the hijackers wanted to fly the plane to Tehran, pilots managed to land the plane at the Antalya Airport for refuelling.

Earlier report also said that one of the hijackers was speaking Arabic and had a knife and the other was carrying a package which he claimed to be a bomb.

Later, an escaped passenger told NTV that the two hijackers had claimed they were from al-Qaida.
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(Xinhua News Agency August 19, 2007)