Russian Hijacker Foiled; Man Kills Self in Earlier Incident
Police foiled an attempt to hijack an airliner carrying 164 passengers at a Moscow airport Thursday, hours after a man in southern Russia blew himself up when commandos stormed the airliner he had seized.
Police at Moscow’s southeastern Vnukovo airport quickly arrested a man who tried to commandeer a Tu-154 airliner early in the evening, the Ministry for Emergency Situations said.
“One terrorist has been seized without risk to passengers,” ministry spokesman Karl Smolikov said.
Security sources said earlier that the hijacker took over the airliner and demanded a ransom of $2 million as well as a pistol, a radio, cigarettes, an English translator and a map of Iran and Iraq.
The airliner had been due to fly to the town of Mineralniye Vody in Russia’s increasingly lawless southern frontier region, site of a rash of unsuccessful and sometimes bloody kidnapings this year.
In the other incident, a man who seized a Yak-40 plane in Makhachkala, capital of the crime-ridden Russian republic of Dagestan, blew himself up when police commandos stormed the plane in thick fog at dawn Thursday.
The five-pound explosive charge ripped a huge, jagged hole in the roof of the plane and badly mangled the hijacker’s body.
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