Guards overpower hijacker on Saudi Airlines plane

Guards foiled an attempt to hijack a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight yesterday heading from Sudan to Jeddah with 204 people on board, Saudi and Sudanese officials said.

The failed hijacking by a Saudi gunman is the latest in a series of global attacks which have put the world on edge amid fears of an upsurge in guerrilla violence.

Saudi Arabian Airlines said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency that none of the 185 passengers or 19 crew on Flight 450 was injured as guards disarmed and arrested the gunman.

A security source at Khartoum's international airport said the hijacker was injured and was now being treated at a private hospital in the Sudanese capital. He said the gunman, identified as Adel Nasir Zahra, 37, had sought to force the plane to London where he wanted to seek asylum.

Sudan's Interior Ministry said investigations were under way to determine how the man managed to board the plane armed with a pistol.

"If we find negligence on the side of any person or institution, measures will be taken," Sudanese Interior Ministry spokesman Sayed al-Husseiny told radio Omdurman.

The incident came just over a month after the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks by suicide hijackers against the United States.

Most of the suicide hijackers were Saudis. Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996 before he was expelled and moved to Afghanistan.

The Sudanese security source said the hijacker had pulled out his gun 20 minutes into the flight and threatened the pilot. A guard on board the flight struck the gunman from behind and overpowered him after he dropped his weapon.

The aircraft then returned to Khartoum and landed safely. It has since resumed its aborted journey to the Saudi port city of Jeddah, sources in Khartoum said.

"The plane was inspected for explosives. None were found and the security authority began investigations with the hijacker," the statement from the Sudanese Interior Ministry said.

The security source said the man had been in Sudan for nine days before the attempted hijacking, but it was not clear what he had been doing in the country.

The failed hijacking is the latest in a global wave of crime. While authorities have not proved a link between the incidents, they have rattled the nerves of a world still shaken by September 11.

In Indonesia, investigators are searching for links between bomb blasts in Bali at the weekend, which killed more than 180 people, and bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

A statement purportedly from bin Laden and carried by Qatar's al-Jazeera television on Monday praised recent attacks against US soldiers in Kuwait and an oil tanker in Yemen.

Saudi Arabian Airlines was last victim of a hijacking in October 2000, when two Saudi youths diverted a Jeddah to London flight with 90 passengers on board to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The hijackers said in Baghdad they were seeking rights for Saudis like decent education and health services and called for the removal of the Saudi monarchy.