Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia — Chechen men wielding knives and claiming to have a bomb hijacked a Russian plane carrying 174 people after it left Turkey on Thursday, forcing it to land in the holy Saudi city of Medina. Reports said 45 hostages were freed or escaped as a standoff continued into today.
After landing, security forces took positions around the aircraft and a Saudi team began negotiating with the hijackers, said Abdul Fatah Mohammad Atta, the Medina airport manager.
Russia's ITAR-Tass reported later from Moscow that the hijackers stopped talking, apparently unhappy with the unspecified terms offered.
Reports on the number of hijackers, identified as Chechens, varied from two to four. And it wasn't clear what the hijackers wanted. Saudi officials said they had had earlier asked to fly to Afghanistan. Russian Embassy official Igor Kremnev told Russia's NTV television that the hijackers' demands were unclear.
The hijacking began after the plane, a Tu-154 from Vnukovo Airlines, took off at 5:30 a.m. CST Thursday from Istanbul's Ataturk International airport en route to Moscow, with 162 passengers and 12 crew members.
The hijackers, armed with knives and claiming to have a bomb, commandeered the craft 30 minutes later. They identified themselves as rebels from the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, officials said.
At one point during the flight, a fight between the hijackers and a passenger at the entrance to the cockpit sent the plane on a terrifying plunge of 1,300 feet, Turkish Transport Minister Enis Oksuz said. He said the pilot managed to stabilize the plane.
The plane eventually arrived in Medina, where Muslim pilgrims are preparing to go home after the hajj pilgrimage. The pilots immediately locked themselves inside the cockpit.
Shortly after landing, the hijackers freed about 17 people, mostly the elderly, women and children, and 15 other later escaped from the plane's rear exit, news reports said. By midday today in Saudi Arabia, nearly 17 hours after the hijacking began, a total of 45 hostages had left the plane.
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