A Cypriot official has said that a bomb was suspected to be on board. The hijacked plane was carrying 55 passengers and five crew. Pilot of hijacked Egyptair plane was reportedly threatened by a passenger with suicide belt. Hijacker is thought to be strapped with explosives, and police was asked to back away from aircraft.
"The hijacker has just been arrested," Cypriot government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said on Twitter hours after the incident, without providing further details.
Cyprus state radio said the man was demanding asylum in the Mediterranean island nation.
The hijacker had an ex-wife in Cyprus, CYBC said.
Egyptian state TV reported that the hijacker is an Egyptian national named Ibrahim Samaha, showing a picture of him taken in the plane cabin.
Witnesses said the hijacker threw a letter on the apron of the airport in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered to his ex-wife, who is Cypriot.
In a later statement, EgyptAir said only crew and four foreigners remain on hijacked plane.
Negotiations with the Hijacker result in the release of all the passengers, except the crew and four foreigners.
— EGYPTAIR (@EGYPTAIR) March 29, 2016
It was previously reported that 10 U.S. and 8 British nationals were on board the hijacked aircraft. Initially, it was reported that the hijacker(s) set 30 women and children free, then let all Egyptian passengers leave the aircraft.
The Cyprus foreign ministry confirmed in a statement that the flight "was hijacked and diverted to Larnaca international airport". It said "crisis management plans" had been put in place and that the country's National Crisis Centre had been in contact with Egyptian authorities. Cyprus government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said on Twitter that President Nicos Anastasiades had spoken by telephone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
The incident came after a Russian airliner was downed on October 31 over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. The Daesh group claimed to have smuggled a bomb on board the plane.
Larnaca is no stranger to hostage crises. Several hijacked planes were diverted to the airport in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1988, a Kuwait Airways flight hijacked en route from Bangkok to Kuwait was diverted to Mashhad and later to Larnaca, where hijackers killed two Kuwaiti passengers and dumped their bodies on the tarmac.
In February 1978, an Egyptian commando unit stormed a hijacked Cyprus Airways DC-8 at Larnaca airport, where 15 passengers were being held hostage. Some 15 Egyptian soldiers were killed and 15 wounded. All the hostages were freed and the hijackers arrested.
Our flight MS181 is officially hijacked. we'll publish an official statement now. #Egyptair
— EGYPTAIR (@EGYPTAIR) March 29, 2016
