A hijacker seized an Egyptian airliner on Tuesday and diverted it to
Cyprus, before releasing all the passengers except four foreigners and
the crew, officials and the airline said.
Cyprus state radio said the man was demanding asylum in the Mediterranean island nation.
The man, who is not Egyptian, asked for a translator to press his demand, it added, without providing further details.
Egyptian
civil aviation said the hijacker had threatened to detonate an
explosives belt on the EgyptAir flight which was diverted to Cyprus's
southern coastal city of Larnaca.
EgyptAir
said on Twitter that "negotiations with the hijacker" had resulted in
"the release of all the passengers, except the crew and four
foreigners."
The identities of the foreigners was not immediately clear.
Cyprus
police said the hijacker had contacted the control tower at 8:30 am
(0530 GMT) and the plane was given permission to land at 8:50 am.
A crisis team was deployed to the airport, the main entry point for tourists to the Mediterranean resort island.
The
plane was parked on the tarmac away from the new terminal building but
just 200 metres (yards) from a beach where dozens of foreign tourists
were out.
The aircraft was cordoned off by armed police.
The airport was closed during the crisis with incoming flights diverted to Paphos on the island's western edge.
The hijacker made no immediate demands, Cypriot state television reported.
The
EgyptAir plane was headed from the Mediterranean coastal city of
Alexandria to Cairo with 81 passengers on board when it was seized,
Egyptian civil aviation said.
The airline tweeted: "Our Flight MS181 is officially hijacked."
The
Cyprus foreign ministry confirmed in a statement that the flight "was
hijacked and diverted to Larnaca international airport".
It
said "crisis management plans" had been put in place and that the
country's National Crisis Centre had been in contact with Egyptian
authorities.
Cyprus
government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said on Twitter that
President Nicos Anastasiades had spoken by telephone with Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The motive of the hijacking was not clear.
The
incident came after a Russian airliner was downed on October 31 over
the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. The Islamic State
group claimed to have smuggled a bomb on board the plane.
Larnaca is no stranger to hostage crises. Several hijacked planes were diverted to the airport in the 1970s and 1980s.
In
1988, a Kuwait Airways flight hijacked en route from Bangkok to Kuwait
was diverted to Mashhad and later to Larnaca, where hijackers killed two
Kuwaiti passengers and dumped their bodies on the tarmac.
In
February 1978, an Egyptian commando unit stormed a hijacked Cyprus
Airways DC-8 at Larnaca airport, where 15 passengers were being held
hostage. Some 15 Egyptian soldiers were killed and 15 wounded. All the
hostages were freed and the hijackers arrested.
