Darfur rebels hijack plane to fly to France: Libya
TRIPOLI (AFP)
The hijackers of a Sudanese passenger plane with more than 100 people on board have claimed to belong to a Darfur rebel group and want to fly to Paris, Libyan officials said Wednesday.
The Sun Air Boeing 737 was hijacked shortly after it took off from Nyala, the largest city in Darfur, on Tuesday afternoon bound for the capital Khartoum, and was granted permission to land by Libyan authorities at Kufra military airport in the southeast of the country after it ran short on fuel.
The hijackers, who have refused to talk directly with Libyan officials, have said they belong to the Sudanese Liberation Army, whose exiled leader Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur lives in Paris, said the director of the airport, Khaled Saseya.
"The plane's pilot has indicated that the hijackers, who number 10 or maybe more ... have said they belong to the Sudanese Liberation Army of Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur," he told the Libyan official news agency Jana.
The pilot said "the hijackers claim to have coordinated with him (Nur) to join him in Paris," he added.
Saseya said the hijackers have demanded a flight plan to Paris and fuel.But Nur, whose group is one of the two main rebels movements that have been fighting in Darfur since 2003, denied they were involved in the hijacking.
"We categorically deny the responsibility of our movement in this hijacking operation," Nur told press.
"We don't support putting the lives of Sudanese civilians at risk in any circumstances," he said from his home in Paris.
The hijackers continue to refuse to talk to Libyan officials directly, said Saseya.
"The hijackers refuse to free any passengers or even open the doors which have remained closed since the plane landed," he said.
With the hijacking stretching past 12 hours, several passengers have fainted after the plane's air conditioning system failed, the pilot told airport officials early on Wednesday.
Sun Air executive manager Mortada Hassan has said there were 95 passengers and seven crew on board the plane. Two airline staff earlier told AFP that 87 passengers were on the flight.
Ibrahim al-Hillo, a commander in Nur's Sudanese Liberation Army, said the hijacking was the natural consequence of government repression of those displaced by the fighting in Darfur.
"This is the result of what the government is doing in the camps of displaced people in Nyala," he told AFP by telephone on Tuesday.
On Monday, Sudanese security forces pushed into one of the biggest and most volatile camps for displaced people in the country's western region of Darfur, at Kalma, just outside the hijacked plane's point of departure, Nyala.
U.N.-led peacekeepers said 33 people were buried on Tuesday following armed clashes between police and camp residents.