Update: 9:45PM A man thought to be strapped with explosives has hijacked an EgyptAir flight between Alexandria and Cairo and forced it to land in Cyprus, officials say.
After Flight MS181 landed at Larnaca Airport, the hijacker released all the people on board the Airbus A320 except four foreign passengers and the crew, EgyptAir said.
Reuters, citing Egyptian and Cypriot officials, said there had been 60 people, including seven crew members, on board. The BBC put that figure higher, saying there had been 81 passengers.
Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane’s pilot told authorities he was threatened by a passenger wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced to land in Larnaca.
A Cyprus Foreign Ministry official said he could not confirm the man was rigged with explosives.The hijacking occurred in Cyprus’s flight information region.
Passengers on the plane included eight Britons and 10 Americans, three security sources at Alexandria Airport told Reuters.
Another hit for Egypt
Egypt’s vital tourism industry was already reeling from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it was brought down by a terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board, killing all 224 people on board.
Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its proximity to the Middle East.
A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner at Larnaca Airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.
In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait in a 16-day seige had a stopover in Larnaca, where two hostages were killed.