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 After the aircraft landed at Larnaca airport, the hijacker
released everyone onboard except three passengers and four crew
following negotiations, Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said.
He declined to give their nationalities.
Eighty-one people, including 21 foreigners and 15 crew, had been
onboard the Airbus 320, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a
statement.
The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) and a private
broadcaster, Antenna, said the hijacker was asking for the release
of women prisoners in Egypt, suggesting a political motive.
He had also asked to get in touch with European Union officials,
CyBC reported, citing a letter the hijacker dropped onto the apron
at Larnaca airport.
The plane remained on the tarmac at Larnaca throughout the morning
while Cypriot security forces took up positions around the scene.
Security sources in Egypt said a separate New York-bound flight from
Cairo was delayed due to security fears related to the hijacking.
They gave no more details.
While the reasons for the hijacking were not entirely clear, the
incident will deal another blow to Egypt's tourism industry and hurt
efforts to revive an economy hammered by political unrest following
the 2011 uprising.
The sector, a main source of hard currency, was already reeling from
the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it was brought down by a
terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board,
killing all 224 people on board.
The latest reports on Tuesday's hijacking contradict earlier
statements by Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and other Cypriot
security sources suggesting the hijacker's motives were personal and
linked to an ex-wife who lived in Cyprus.
There was also some confusion over the identity of the hijacker.
Egypt's official state news agency MENA initially named him as
Egyptian national Ibrahim Samaha but later said the hijacker was
called Seif Eldin Mustafa.
The Cypriot Foreign Affairs Ministry also identified the hijacker in
a tweet as Mustafa.
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The Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane's pilot, Omar al-Gammal,
had informed authorities that he was threatened by a passenger who
claimed to be wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced him to
divert the plane to Larnaca.
"We do not know until now if this was a threat or if he was really
wearing an explosive belt," Fethy told the news conference, adding
that the hijacker was not carrying a gun.
Witnesses said the hijacker threw a letter on the apron of the
airport in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered
to his ex-wife, who is Cypriot.
Passengers on the plane included eight Americans, four Britons, four
Dutch, two Belgians, an Italian, a Syrian and French national, the
Civil Aviation Ministry. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said earlier a
Dutchman was among the foreigners still aboard.
Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its
proximity to the Middle East.
A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner
at Larnaca airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations
between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.
In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to
Kuwait in a 16-day seige had a stopover in Larnaca, where two
hostages were killed.
Egypt said it would send a plane to Cyprus to pick up stranded
passengers, some of whom had been traveling to Cairo for connecting
flights abroad.
(Additionaly reporting by Michele Kambas in Athens and Mostafa
Hashem, Ahmed Mohammed Hassan, Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed in
Cairo, Editing by Michael Georgy and Angus MacSwan)
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