The World - News from April 3, 1988

The Communist Party leader of the Irkutsk region in Soviet Siberia was replaced after the hijacking of a Soviet airliner last month. The official news agency Tass said Vasily I. Sitnikov had been replaced as party first secretary in the region by his former deputy, Vladimir Potapov. Local officials were criticized by the Soviet press after 11 members of the Ovechkin family, seven of whom made up a jazz band, hijacked an airliner that left Irkutsk on March 8 in a bid to flee to the West. Five members of the family and three others died when troops stormed the plane at a military airfield near Leningrad.