LONDON: The BOAC VC 10 hijacked by Palestinian guerillas landed safely in North Jordan at the Zarka Revolutionary Airport of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine today [Sept 9], British Foreign Office sources said here. No one was injured during the hijacking, BOAC sources said.

Meanwhile, the Beirut International Airport Control Tower reported today that a hijacked El Air aircraft landed at the “Revolutionary Airfield” in the Jordan Desert today. The hijackers were once again from the PFLP. In Tel Aviv, Israeli aircraft El Air, however, today categorically denied reports that one of its airliners had been hijacked.

Earlier, a Beirut report said Britain’s first hijacked airliner with 103 passengers and 10 crew reported abroad, took off from Beirut today. In command — in their fifth international hijacking since Sunday — were armed guerillas of the PFLP. The Bombay-to-London flight was seized after a scheduled stop in Bahrein and obliged to take on fuel in Beirut for the rest of its journey towards captivity. No one was allowed to leave it.

The unprecedented hijacking appeared as a pressure on the British Government to give in to a PFLP ultimatum to release a 24-year-old woman guerilla, Leila Khaled, captured during the only unsuccessful hijacking on Sunday.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2020