Bus Hijacker Seized in Poland; 1 Hurt in Blast

Security forces stormed a hijacked intercity bus at Warsaw’s airport Friday, rescued the last five hostages aboard and captured a young Pole who had seized the vehicle by threatening dozens of passengers with explosives.

The hijacker exploded a grenade during the assault, wounding one hostage, authorities said. He was hustled away in handcuffs, ending a four-hour hostage drama on the tarmac of Okecie Airport. His motives were not immediately known.

“When he was being apprehended, he used the explosives and one hostage was injured,” said Col. Janusz Olkiewicz, spokesman for the Communist government’s Interior Ministry.

In a separate development, the official news agency PAP reported that two young men tried unsuccessfully to hijack a light plane Thursday as the pilot was warming it up near Gdansk. The pilot managed to block the plane’s fuel supply and the men fled, PAP said. One was captured a few hours later and police were hunting the other Friday.

Official reports said the bus was seized at about 11:15 a.m. as it arrived in Warsaw from Staszow, about 90 miles to the south.

“There was a guy terrorizing a passenger and he hung a grenade on his chest,” bus driver Stefan Miller told a television news reporter. “He held it and threatened to explode it.”

The hijacker ordered the driver to the airport, where he demanded that two planes be made available so he could choose one to be flown to Frankfurt, West Germany, television said.

Miller said the man permitted only a woman with a small child to leave the bus.

A woman who managed to escape told a Western reporter on condition her name not be used: “He was acting as if he was mentally ill. He was behaving strangely. At one point the bus slowed down and about 20 people who seemed to know that something was going on jumped off the bus. I was among them.”

About 20 hostages were still aboard when the vehicle parked between the international and domestic terminals, an assistant at the government spokesman’s office said.

An Associated Press reporter saw several dozen anti-terrorist police charge the bus and overpower the hijacker. The action took three or four minutes.