57 Aboard Die as Egyptians Storm Hijacked Airliner : Grenades Set Off by Terrorists Start Deadly Fire

More than 50 people were killed Sunday when Egyptian commandos stormed a hijacked EgyptAir jetliner with gunfire and explosives and the Arab terrorists on board detonated hand grenades in the crowded passenger compartment.

The assault on the plane was carried out in darkness by Egyptian army personnel with Maltese government approval.

Police officials said early today that the death toll was 57. Among the dead were eight young children.

The casualties included an American woman who was shot to death by the hijackers, and four others, two Americans and two Israelis, who were wounded in what were decribed as “execution” attempts before the assault on the plane.

Described as ‘Hell’

“I have never seen anything like it before,” the plane’s pilot, 39-year-old Hani Galal, told a press conference early today. “Three grenades--three high intensity grenades--thrown on passengers inside a small place like a 737. It was hell.”

The grenades started a fire that destroyed the interior of the plane, authorities said.

Joel Levy, deputy chief of the U.S. Embassy in Malta, confirmed that there were three Americans aboard the EgyptAir plane and that one of them was killed.

Greek security police identified the Americans who boarded the plane in Athens as Jackie Nink Pflug, 30, a resident of Egypt; Scarlett Rogenkamp, 38, of Oceanside, Calif., and Patrick Scott Baker, 28, of White Salmon, Wash., according to the Associated Press.

Pflug’s family in Pasadena, Tex., told the news service that Pflug, a teacher at the American College School in Cairo, was wounded by the hijackers and then thrown off the jet. Her sister said Sunday night that Pflug was being treated at a hospital in Malta.

The pilot Galal appeared at his news conference with his head swathed in bandages from a bullet wound in the forehead. He said that he had cut down the leader of the hijackers with a fire ax as the Egyptian commandos stormed aboard the airplane.

The Boeing 737 jetliner was seized on a flight from Athens to Cairo 10 minutes after taking off from Athens airport. Security at Athens has been the subject of international controversy since a TWA airliner was hijacked there in June and taken to Beirut, where 39 Americans were held for 16 days.

Coincidentally, the EgyptAir plane was the same one that was forced down by U.S. Air Force jets last month to the Sigonella Air Base in Sicily after it left Egypt carrying the Arab hijackers of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro.

According to pilot Galal and three passengers, the hijackers, who appeared to be speaking with Palestinian accents, quickly collected the passports of the passengers and threatened to begin executing their hostages unless their demands (not made clear) were met, beginning with the Israeli captives and then the Americans.

When it left Athens, the plane carried 91 passengers, including the hijackers, and six crew members. There were at least four hijackers and possibly a fifth, according to Maltese officials.

A Hijacker Wounded

During the collection of the passports, an Egyptian security guard, one of four on board, shot one of the hijackers. In a gun battle that followed, the security guard and two stewardesses were wounded, one hijacker was killed, and the airliner lost its atmospheric pressure, forcing the captain to make an emergency descent.

The gunmen then demanded to be taken to Malta’s Luqa International Airport, where authorities at first closed the facility but then agreed to allow the plane to land when the pilot said he was running low on fuel.

The airliner was taken to a remote corner of the field, about a mile from the passenger terminal.

After the plane landed, the hijackers’ apparent leader, who identified himself only as Nabil, according to the pilot, demanded that the plane be refueled, but he refused to disclose his next intended destination. He said he would begin killing passengers every 15 minutes to enforce his demands.

“Fifteen minutes later exactly, they shot an Israeli girl at point-blank range in the face and then threw her off the plane,” Galal said.

Thirty minutes later, the hijackers shot their second victim.

“After the third victim, I was prepared to do anything to prevent more killings, especially killings like these in cold blood,” Galal said. “I heard the victims asking for mercy, sitting there waiting for execution. It was awful.”

Maltese Adamant

The pilot said that it became apparent that the Maltese authorities would not allow the plane to refuel, and he sent a message warning that the main doors had been sealed by the hijackers and saying that the only access was through the over-wing doors. He also took what he called technical measures to prevent the plane from leaving.

Maltese Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici spent the day in the airport control tower, along with several foreign envoys, including U.S. Ambassador Gary Matthews, and a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“I was expecting the storming of the aircraft at any time,” Galal said. Eventually, he saw an indicator light that someone had entered the cargo hold, and he tried to distract the hijackers.

Finally the assault began with the Egyptians blowing a hole through the aircraft’s floor from the cargo hold and also storming the over-wing doors. At the sound of the explosion, the pilot said, the hijackers threw their grenades into the passenger compartment. The grenades exploded.

By the time of the storming, 17 people had left the plane, according to Maltese authorities. They included the dead American woman, seven wounded people and nine women--two Egyptians and seven Filipinos belonging to a dance troupe called the Gino Remonti Seven.

Galal said that after the third explosion, the hijacker he knew as Nabil returned to the cockpit to kill him. After Nabil fired one shot, which grazed the pilot’s head, Galal felled the hijacker with his ax. He said the blow did not kill the hijacker, who was eventually shot to death by the Egyptian commandos.

Ski Mask Found

The pilot told the news conference that he later found a ski mask similar to those used by the hijackers at the foot of the airliner’s ramp and that he now believes that one of the hijackers did not die in the storming. Galal was taken to the hospital to view the injured and to the morgue, but was unable to make any positive identifications.

The pilot repeatedly emphasized that he supported the decision to storm the plane, saying the hijackers were “very desperate and bloodthirsty people.”

Questioned about the high loss of life during the rescue operation, he replied: “If you take the decision to storm an airplane with hijackers with explosives and guns, you can’t guarantee it will be a clean operation. There must be some casualties. They were facing first-class killers. They were desperate men who would not have hesitated to explode the entire aircraft.”

The hijackers Saturday claimed to belong to a group called Egypt Revolution, which last August assumed responsibility for the shooting of an Israeli diplomat in Cairo.

However, the pilot and the freed passengers asserted that none of the hijackers spoke Arabic with an Egyptian accent.

Two Egyptian women who were released unharmed from the plane with the Filipino dancers said that the hijackers’ Arabic sounded Palestinian or Lebanese.

“They said they were Egyptian, but they didn’t even look Egyptian,” said Maha Ismael, of Cairo.

‘Each Had a Grenade’

“Each one had a hand grenade that they showed to us, then put in their pockets,” said Loretana Shafik, a business student at Cairo University.

She said they were also armed with small pistols and that two of them wore ski masks to hide their faces.

In addition to 30 to 40 Egyptians, the passenger list included Greeks, Filipinos, about 10 Europeans of various other nationalities and two women, probably Israelis, who were critically wounded when the hijackers attempted to execute them.

The Israeli women were forced to stand in the plane’s doorway with their hands bound behind them, shot in the face or skull, and pushed from the plane, Paul Mifsud, a Maltese government spokesman, said.

A third woman, who according to Mifsud’s description was probably Pflug, the American, also suffered a head wound. She was dropped from the plane to the tarmac and lay under the plane throughout a tense morning of negotiations between the hijackers and the Maltese prime minister.

One of the Israeli women with a bullet wound in the face was reported in serious but not life-threatening condition; the second Israeli woman, shot in the head, was operated on Sunday afternoon and described as near death, and the American woman--who lay fully conscious under the plane for hours--was said to be in critical condition.

The hijackers denied authorities permission to retrieve the woman from beneath the plane until the hijackers, anxious for food, agreed to let them rescue her in exchange for resupplying the plane early Sunday afternoon.

Most of the activity at the airport was not visible to journalists, who were barred by police and military guards from reaching vantage points where the hijacked Boeing 737 could be seen.

Police who helped fire crews remove bodies from the burned-out airplane said that it was a total loss. As dawn approached today, they said that five bodies remained aboard a section of the plane that was still too hot and smoky for firemen to enter. Three of the remaining bodies, they said, were those of children.