Hijackers Fire Shots and Jet Is Refueled : Gunmen Demand Iranian OK for Takeoff, Then Agree to Wait

Hijackers holding a Kuwaiti jumbo jet in remote northeastern Iran fired five warning shots at Iranian security personnel Thursday and demanded that the plane be refueled and the runway cleared for takeoff, Iranian news reports said.

The official news agency IRNA said that authorities, who had ignored several previous requests for fuel in an effort to keep the plane from leaving, complied with the demand and ordered the Boeing 747 refueled.

“The situation is presently out of control, and anything may happen at any moment,” IRNA said of the tense standoff, now in its third day at Mashhad airport, 470 miles northeast of Tehran.

Deadline Extended

Hours later, IRNA reported that the hijackers had accepted a request by Iranian officials for a six-hour extension of their ultimatum to leave at midnight local time Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the hijackers freed 32 people, leaving about 50 hostages on board the jumbo jet, which was hijacked Tuesday on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, to Kuwait. Most are Kuwaitis, including three members of Kuwait’s royal family.

IRNA said the hijackers regard the remaining passengers as “political prisoners” and have threatened to make them “pay a dear price” unless their demands are met.

The news agency said the gunmen reiterated their threat to blow up the plane if any attempt is made to storm it and quoted one as saying that explosives had been placed throughout the cabin.

The hijackers, now said to number up to seven men, are demanding freedom for 17 Shia Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait for several terrorist offenses, including bomb attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in 1983.

Although the hijackers have not identified themselves, they are believed to be Shia militants from Kuwait or from one of the Shia terrorist groups that Iran supports in Lebanon and Iraq.

Josef Degeorgi, a 53-year-old Austrian who was among the latest group of passengers to be released, told reporters that seven Arabic-speaking gunmen were on board the Kuwait Airways jetliner. All are armed with handguns and all are masked, he said. A passenger freed earlier had put the number of hijackers at “five or six.”

Some of the released passengers said the hijackers displayed some kindness toward the hostages.

“A couple of the hijackers spoke English and asked if we wanted pillows and drinks and things,” a British passenger, Jean Sefton, was quoted as saying. “They talked a bit to the children.”

As the first hijacking of the year passed the 48-hour mark, serious differences appeared to be emerging between Iranian authorities and a Kuwaiti delegation that arrived in Mashhad on Wednesday to negotiate with the gunmen.

Iran’s deputy prime minister, Alireza Moayeri, was quoted by IRNA as complaining that the Kuwaiti negotiators were “not taking the issue (of the hijacking) seriously” and did not attach enough importance to “saving the lives of their citizens” aboard the plane.

Pressure for Concessions

While it was hard to draw firm conclusions from IRNA’s fragmentary reports, diplomats said it appeared that the Iranians were trying to pressure the Kuwaitis into making concessions to the terrorists in order to end the hijacking quickly and peacefully.

Kuwait has said it will not release the 17 prisoners and will not negotiate with the terrorists unless they release all the hostages first.

The hijackers, in a radio conversation with the Mashhad control tower, called the Kuwaiti position “a waste of time” and warned that the remaining hostages would be dealt with harshly in order to make Kuwait “realize its responsibility for the grave consequences of this issue.”

Dilemma for Iran

Several diplomats in the Persian Gulf region said the hijacking appears to pose a dilemma for the Iranians, who finance an Iraq-based Shia guerrilla movement and maintain close ties with several Shia terrorist organizations in Lebanon.

“I don’t think the Iranians are actually behind the hijacking, but it’s quite possible that one of their allied Shia groups is,” one analyst said. “For the Iranians, the problem is getting out of this in a way that does not seem to be abetting terrorism but also does not antagonize any of the factions through which they maintain their influence in Lebanon.”

Kuwait had asked Iran not to allow the plane to take off under any circumstances. Despite several earlier--and apparently false--reports by IRNA that the plane had been or was about to be refueled, the Iranians, until Thursday, appeared to be complying with the Kuwaiti request.

Several times during the morning, IRNA reported, Iranian negotiators urged the hijackers to “keep cool” and await the outcome of talks between Iran and Kuwait. But later in the day a crisis seemed to be approaching, with the hijackers showing signs of increasing impatience and nervousness.

After releasing the 32 mostly European and Asian hostages, the hijackers made two of the three Kuwaiti royal family members still on board the plane issue their own appeals over the cockpit radio.

“We are very tired, and our brothers (the hijackers) are very serious about their threat to blow up the plane,” Fadel Khaled al Sabah, a businessman and distant relative of the Kuwaiti ruler, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, was quoted as saying.

One of Khaled Sabah’s two sisters, who are both on board the plane, also appealed to Kuwaiti authorities to negotiate with the terrorists, IRNA said. It did not report her remarks, but it said she spoke in a trembling voice, “overcome by strong tension and panic.”

Warning Shots Fired

Shortly afterward, IRNA said, the hijackers fired five warning shots at Iranian security men who had surrounded the aircraft to prevent it from taking off. After this, it said, the officials relented and ordered the plane refueled.

The hijackers have not indicated where they intend to go. But in Kuwait, the Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to protest the decision to refuel the plane.

In the tiny Persian Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain, meanwhile, officials were reported to have said that the Bahraini passports held by five passengers who boarded the plane in Bangkok were false. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the numbers of the passports provided by Thai authorities did not match the names of the bearers.

Question About Guns

Although this could explain how the hijackers boarded the plane, the manner in which they smuggled their weapons aboard remained unclear. Thai authorities continued to insist that it would have been impossible to smuggle the weapons onto the plane in Bangkok and suggested that they were put on board in Kuwait for the hijackers to pick up after they boarded in Bangkok.

If this should prove to be true, it could suggest that the hijackers are either Kuwaiti Shias or that they relied on the help of accomplices in Kuwait.