Saturday, August 18, 2007

Passengers escape as hijacking in Turkey goes awry

Awry? That almost sounds like it went bad. If people escaped unharmed it actually went well.

Two men tried to hijack a Turkish passenger plane with 142 people aboard Saturday but failed after pilots arranged an emergency landing in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya and the two lost control of the passengers.

Sometimes people just aren't in the mood to be hijacked.

The plane was on its way to Istanbul from Nicosia, in northern Cyprus, when the hijackers, identified by Turkish officials as Mehmet Resat Ozlu, a Turkish national, and Abdulaziz Maliki, a Syrian holding a Palestinian passport, demanded that it be diverted to Iran. They said they were protesting actions by the United States, the officials said.

Yeah, that'll show the US. Hijack a Turkish plane with probably no Americans on it and divert it to Iran. How exactly is that a protest against the US? That's like boycotting Chinese products to teach New Zealand a lesson.

The two men, shouting in Arabic, ran to the cockpit door and tried unsuccessfully to kick it open. One held a plastic bag and said it contained a bomb, passengers told NTV, the private television network.

Unless I actually see a bomb, I'm tackling the shit out of someone.

The pilots convinced the hijackers that the plane needed to refuel and landed in Antalya. Then they kicked open the cockpit windows and fled the plane.

"Good luck everybody!"

The hijackers decided to free the women and children on board, but as people began filing out of the plane through two side doors, passengers forced open a door at the back of the plane and, in a sudden flood, most of the remaining hostages escaped.

Kind of tough to negotiate with tray tables being your only leverage.

2 Comments:

Blogger none said...

Iran? Does no-one want to go to Cuba these days?

August 21, 2007 6:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't even think Castro likes these people...they just might be afraid of him

August 22, 2007 1:57 PM  

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