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Two hijackers claiming to be Darfur rebels on Wednesday released all 87 passengers from a Sudanese jet at a remote Libyan airport, keeping the crew captive for a reported bid to fly to France.
"All of the passengers have left the plane," a Libyan official told AFP from Kufra oasis where the aircraft was forced to land on Tuesday evening after being hijacked en route from Darfur's main city of Nyala to Khartoum.
"The two hijackers and the seven crew are still inside. We are continuing to negotiate with them," he said, requesting anonymity. A Sudanese official said there were eight crew on board.
The jet was granted permission to land by Libyan authorities at the isolated World War II-era airport in the southeast of the country, close to the Sudanese border, after it ran short on fuel.
The passengers had reportedly been given water but no food and some fainted when the air conditioning failed in the searing desert heat.
Sudan called on the Libyan authorities to arrest and deport to Khartoum the "terrorist" hijackers, saying that Libya was being "very helpful" as the crisis entered its second day.
"We are condemning first the hijacking of a civilian airplane and we are now in continuous contact and consultation with the Libyan authorities in Kufra airport," foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq told AFP.
No Darfur movement has claimed public responsibility, but the director of Kufra airport said the hijackers belong to a faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army, whose exiled leader Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur lives in Paris.
"It is not clear whether there is one or more, or whether they belong to Abdul Wahid. We're not expecting him to say yes," Sadiq said.
Nur, whose group was one of two Darfur movements that first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, denied any involvement.
Ibrahim al-Hillo, a commander in the same SLA faction denied any involvement from within the movement, but suggested in a telephone call to AFP that the hijackers could be sympathizers of the Paris-based rebel leader.
The pilot said "the hijackers claim to have coordinated with him (Nur) to join him in Paris," Kufra airport director Khaled Saseya told Libya's official JANA news agency.
Saseya said the hijackers have demanded a flight plan to Paris and fuel.
But Nur denied any involvement. "We categorically deny the responsibility of our movement in this hijacking operation," he said in a telephone interview on Al-Jazeera television.
The SLA has fractured into multiple groups headed by different field commanders over the more than five years of war in Sudan's western Darfur region.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that "everything is being considered" to protect the lives of those on board, while not saying explicitly whether France was prepared to receive the plane.
Nur "is a true leader of a rebellion, of the resistance in Darfur, who says that he does not know these people and that he absolutely refuses to use these methods," Kouchner said told Europe 1 radio.
Abdel Hafez Abdel Rahim, spokesman for Sudan's Civil Aviation Authority, said there were 95 people on the plane, including eight crew members, and among the 87 passengers were two Egyptians and a Kenyan.
"No one declared responsibility for the hijacking. All the rebels until now denied the operation," the spokesman said.
On Monday, Sudanese security forces pushed into one of the biggest and most volatile camps for displaced people in Darfur at Kalma, just outside the hijacked plane's point of departure, Nyala.
UN-led peacekeepers said 33 people were buried on Tuesday following armed clashes between police and camp residents.
Three high-ranking members of a former Darfur rebel movement that signed a peace treaty with the government in 2006 were on the hijacked flight, said an official in the Minni Minawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement.
Sudan has a history of hijacking incidents, having both received and been the country of origin of hijacked planes.
The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since the Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.
The war began when ethnic minority rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power.
PHOTO CAPTION
The nose of a Boeing 737.
AFP
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