Ex-Hostages on Jet Fly Home to Turkey, Russia
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MOSCOW — Overcome with tears and relief, passengers who survived a bloody 22-hour ordeal aboard a hijacked Russian jetliner returned home Saturday from Saudi Arabia to friends and relatives in Turkey and Russia.
A Russian government airliner brought 121 people, most of them Russians, to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport--their destination Thursday when armed men hijacked their flight from Istanbul, Turkey, in an apparent attempt to draw attention to what they call Russian atrocities in the republic of Chechnya.
“I’m so glad to see you, I don’t know what to say,” said Valentin Malofeyev, greeting his wife, Olga, one of the passengers, with five pink roses at the airport.
About 50 other people on the hijacked plane were flown home Saturday to Turkey.
Saudi special forces stormed the plane Friday in Medina. Russian flight attendant Yulia Fomina and a Turkish passenger, Gursel Kambal, both 27, were killed, as was one hijacker.
Russian officials praised the crew, who locked the hijackers out of the cockpit by holding a broken door handle while the hijackers chopped at the door with an emergency ax.
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