Libya passenger plane hijacked, lands in Malta A young boy is led off the plane after an agreement to free women and children was reached with the hijackers — AFP
A young boy is led off the plane after an agreement to free women and children was reached with the hijackers — AFP

A young boy is led off the plane after an agreement to free women and children was reached with the hijackers — AFP

A Libyan aircraft with 118 people on board has been hijacked and diverted to Malta by two men claiming to have hand grenades, media in Malta reported.

One of the hijackers told the crew he was “pro-Gaddafi” and that he was willing to let all 111 passengers leave the Airbus A320, but not its seven crew, if his demands were met, the Times of Malta said.

It was unclear what the demands were.

State television TVM said the two hijackers of the Libyan plane had threatened to detonate the grenades.

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed in an uprising in 2011, and the country has been wreaked by factional violence since.

Libya’s UN-backed government confirmed the hijacking and its forced diversion to Malta, Libya’s state news agency LANA reported. All passengers aboard the plane were in good health, an unnamed official at the Libyan foreign ministry told the agency.

The office of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat confirmed that a negotiating team was on standby at Malta International Airport awaiting instructions from the prime minister, who is in a meeting with the National Security Committee.

Security personnel took up positions a few hundred metres from the plane as it stood on the tarmac and no one was seen boarding or leaving it.

The aircraft’s engines were still running 45 minutes after it landed in late morning, the Times of Malta said. All other flights at Malta International Airport were cancelled or diverted, it said.

The aircraft had been flying from Sebha in southwest Libya to Tripoli for state-owned Afriqiyah Airways, a route that would usually take a little over two hours.

The tiny Mediterranean island of Malta is about 500km north of the Libyan coast.

Prime Minister Muscat also tweeted that the passengers on board the plane included 82 men, 28 women and one infant.

The pilot of an Afriqiyah Airways plane that was due to land at Tripoli’s Mitiga airport told the control tower there that the aircraft had been hijacked, a senior security official at the airport said.

“The pilot reported to the control tower in Tripoli that they were being hijacked, then they lost communication with him,” the official told Reuters news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The pilot tried very hard to have them land at the correct destination but they refused.”

Large numbers of security officials could be seen at Mitiga airport after news of the hijacking.

— AFP

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