Family of Jazz Musicians Seized Airliner, Soviets Say

The Soviet Union revealed today that a family of jazz musicians demanding to be flown to London were the ones who set off a bomb aboard an Aeroflot jet and killed four people Tuesday before an assault team stormed the plane and shot five of the hijackers dead.

The hijackers carried weapons and explosives aboard the plane in their instruments, the official Soviet press agency Tass said. In addition to the nine dead, 20 passengers were reported injured in Tuesday’s hijacking of the Tupolev-154 plane, Tass said.

The government newspaper Izvestia said the hijackers included an entire jazz ensemble known as “The Seven Simeons,” six Siberian brothers and their mother, aged in her 50s, and other siblings. Tass said the family name was Ovechkin.

The hijackers set off the bomb while the plane was on the ground near Leningrad, Tass said.

Message to Cockpit

The hijackers seized the plane Tuesday as it was headed to Leningrad after a stop in the Ural Mountains city of Kurgan. The flight began in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.

Tass reported the incident Wednesday but gave few details.

The Sovietskaya Rossiya daily reported today that the cockpit crew had been relayed a message from the hijackers that they were to proceed to London.

“The pilots reported what happened to ground control,” Tass said. “They were told that a refueling was needed to meet the demand, and the airliner made an unscheduled landing.”

Bomb in Tail Section

Tass said that a special assault team boarded the plane after it landed and that the hijackers opened fire.

“The bandits managed to set off an explosive device in the airliner’s tail section. The plane caught fire,” the agency reported. “An air hostess and three passengers were killed as a result of the act of terrorism.”

Other passengers were evacuated, but 20 were injured and were hospitalized, Tass said.

“The bandits were the Ovechkins, a family musical group from Irkutsk” in Siberia, Tass said. “Eyewitnesses pointed to three leaders among the criminal team--Vasily and Oleg Ovechkin and their mother, Ninel Ovechkin, a plump, fashionably dressed woman of over 50.”