Turkish hijacking ends peacefully

ANKARA (AFP) - Two men claiming to be Al-Qaeda members who hijacked a Turkish plane yesterday with more than 140 people on board surrendered at an airport in southern Turkey, bringing a peaceful end to a five-hour ordeal.

"We contacted and held talks with the hijackers. Their surrender was secured through methods that I do not want to go into," Turkish Interior Minister Osman Gunes said in the capital Ankara.

"It ended without the need for an operation," he added.

The hijackers commandered the plane, an MD-83, shortly after it took off from an airport in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) at 7:15 am (0415 GMT) bound for Istanbul.

The hijackers, saying they were Al-Qaeda members and that they had a bomb, demanded that the plane be diverted to Tehran, or failing that to Syria. But the pilots said they had to refuel and landed at the airport of the Turkish Mediterranean resort, Antalya.

Atlas Jet, the airline operating the plane, said the plane was carrying 136 passengers and six crew, but officials later said there were 140 passengers, including eight children, and five crew.

After landing in Antalya, whiel the hijackers were releasing women and children from the front door, most of the passengers broke down the rear door and jumped to safety. Some of them were injured during the escape.

A few passengers and crew remained hostage for a several hours before the hijackers were persuaded to release them and turn themselves in to authorities.

Gunes said one of the hijackers was Turkish national Mehmet Resat Ozlu and the other was Mommen Abdul Aziz Talikh, who has a Syrian passport, but was believed to be of Palestinian origin.

According to the plane's passenger manifest, Ozlu is 27 years old and Talikh is 25.

Turkish police also detained a third person, one of the passengers, as a suspected accomplice, but he was released after questioning, Antalya governor Alattin Yuksel said.

Gunes said police were questioning the two men who surrendered to determine their motives and connections while experts were examining what the two claimed to be a bomb.

Media reports said police had found no links between the men and Al-Qaeda, and discovered that the package contained only modelling clay.

But one of the two men was reportedly carrying a knife on the plane.

The passengers said the hijackers, who spoke a mix of Arabic, English and Turkish, first tried to enter the cockpit but failed, and took a female flight attendant hostage, threatening to hurt her if their demands were not met.

A passenger, who only identified himself by his first name Mahmut, said the hijacking was aimed at protesting the policies of the United States.

"They said their aim is to protest the United States. They say they only want to make their voices heard," he told the CNN-Turk news channel.

Another passenger, Hakki Dogusoy, said the hijackers had said they would not harm the passengers.

"They said 'We are Muslims. You are Muslims too. We will not do you any harm'," Dogusoy said.

Another passenger said their assurances failed to dispel the fright and panic of the passengers.

"We went though very difficult moments. We almost tasted death," a male passenger who identified himself only by his first name Abdullah told the CNN-Turk news channel.

Antalya governor Yuksel said pschologists were called in to help with the negotiations, sometimes posing as senior officials.

While waiting at Antalya, the hijackers told the authorities to send new pilots to the aircraft and allow it to take off for Iran, Yuksel said.

But officials, in a bid to win time for negotiations, first said they had to repair the back door of the plane and then said they had to find a new aircraft.

"When we told them it would take five hours to find plane, they were persuaded to surrender," he told Anatolia.

Most of the passengers of the hijacked plane were flow to Istanbul later Saturday on a different plane.