Hijackers force Sudanese plane to Libya

A Sudanese passenger plane was hijacked yesterday after leaving war-torn Darfur and has been forced to land in Libya, Sudanese and Libyan authorities said.

Libya's Civil Aviation Authority said 95 passengers were on the Boeing 737/200 plane which landed at the airport at Kufrah, an oasis town in the country's southeast, Libya's state news agency Jana reported.

"The Authority had granted permission to the plane to land at the airport out of humanitarian concern after the pilot told the authorities that the plane had ran out of fuel," it said, quoting an unnamed Libyan aviation official.

Three senior members of a former Darfur rebel movement which has signed a peace accord with the government were among the passengers, a spokesman for the group said. Members of the Darfur regional government were also aboard, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said.

The plane, belonging to Khartoum-based private airline Sunair, had just left from the South Darfur capital bound for Khartoum. "About half an hour after takeoff a hijacker demanded to go to Cairo as a destination," said a Sudanese Civil Aviation Authority spokesman, Abdel Hafiz Abdel Rahim.

MENA reported that four men seized the aircraft.

Egyptian authorities refused it permission to land in Egypt and the plane changed course towards Libya, Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera said.

Hamdi Hassan al-Tahar, security manager at Sunair, said the plane had 77 passengers and five crew aboard.

"We have no information about who hijacked the plane and we have had no contact with the passengers," he said.

The Darfur region has been a conflict area since a rebellion against Khartoum's rule broke out more than five years ago.

International experts say more than 2.5 million Darfuris have been driven from their homes and 200,000 people killed in the violence.

Sudan puts the death toll at about 10,000. Insurgents are split into more than dozen factions.

Three senior members of a former Darfur rebel group were aboard the hijacked plane, a spokesman said.

Mohammed Bashir of the Sudan Liberation Movement's Minni Arcua Minnawi faction identified them as an adviser to Minnawi, the movement's land commissioner, and one of the architects of the Darfur peace agreement of 2006.

A source close to the Sudanese civil aviation authorities said there was a scuffle at Nyala airport as the SLM group tried to board with weapons.

Minni Minnawi was the most influential Darfur rebel leader to sign the peace agreement, which most groups rejected.

The SLM become a partner in the national government but Minnawi left Khartoum several months ago and has been distancing himself from the government, political sources say.