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Saudis storm plane, end hijacking crisis

Saudi security forces stormed a hijacked Russian plane yesterday, freeing more than 100 hostages and ending a tense drama that began when Chechen rebels armed with knives commandeered the aircraft after takeoff from Istanbul and threatened to blow it up.

Three people; a flight attendant, a hijacker and a passenger, were killed and several others injured, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

Paramedics at the scene said a woman -- the flight attendant -- was knifed to death and two men were killed by gunfire. The Interior Ministry said the flight attendant was killed by the hijackers during the rescue operation.

The other hijackers were arrested, the ministry said, without giving their number.

The Saudis said they decided to storm the plane, in consultation with the Russian government, after reaching "a dead end" in on-again, off-again negotiations during the 18 hours the jetliner was parked on the tarmac at Medina International Airport.

"The goal of the storming operation was to save the lives of the passengers and the crew with the least number of casualties possible, and it concluded in record time after the hijackers threatened to blow up the plane," the Saudi Interior Ministry statement said.

The number of hijackers was variously put at two, three or four after the Vnukova Airlines plane was hijacked Thursday afternoon shortly after taking off from Istanbul on a flight to Moscow with 174 persons aboard. As many as 46 of the hostages -- mostly women, children and elderly people -- were freed or escaped from the Tupolev 154 jet Thursday night in Medina.

The hijackers were trying to call attention to what they considered atrocities committed by Russia in their native Chechnya, according to a Chechen representative in Jordan. At one point during the hijacking, a Chechen flag was seen taped to the side of the plane as it sat on the Medina tarmac.

"It is a humanitarian issue. Their demands include halting the genocide in Chechnya and sitting at the negotiating table with [Chechen] President [Aslan] Maskhadov to find a peaceful solution to the conflict," Aftayeva Fariza, the Chechen representative, said.
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