CAIRO
— A man claiming to be wearing an explosive vest hijacked an EgyptAir
plane on Tuesday, forcing it to land in Larnaca, on the southern coast
of Cyprus, before he was arrested, according to the Cypriot government.
“It’s over,” the Cypriot Foreign Ministry announced at 2:41 p.m., after a standoff that lasted more than five hours.
Most
of the people on board were released after the flight was diverted en
route to Cairo from Alexandria, but the plane stayed on the tarmac with
the hijacker and seven or eight other people still on board. They were
eventually freed — or escaped, in one case, by leaping from a cockpit
window — and, shortly afterward, the hijacker surrendered.
The
suspect was identified by Cypriot and Egyptian officials as Seif Eldin
Mustafa, an Egyptian living in Cyprus. He had told the pilot that he was
wearing a suicide belt and threatened to detonate it.
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