CAIRO — An Egyptian man hijacked a passenger jet and forced it to land at Larnaca airport in Cyprus on Tuesday in an incident that Cyprus' president said was related to a woman, not terrorism.
Egyptian and Cypriot authorities said the hijacker was arrested, and all the hostages were freed.
The domestic EgyptAir Airbus 320 Flight 181 was hijacked while flying from the coastal city of Alexandria to Cairo. Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation said there were 81 passengers aboard the jet, which took off around 6:30 a.m. local time.
Most of the passengers were released apparently unharmed while a handful of crew and passengers remained aboard as negotiations with the hijacker continued.
TV footage from the scene showed a man jumping out of a cockpit window while three others walked down steps from the jet before Cyprus' Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that the incident was over and the hijacker was arrested, more than seven hours after the jet took off.
The Cypriot Foreign Ministry said the hijacker didn't have explosives on him but had empty telephone cases.
Cyprus' foreign minister said the hijacker appeared to be "psychologically unstable." Ioannis Kasoulides said the hijacking was not an act of terrorism, "despite the fact that the individual appeared to be dangerous in terms of his behavior," the Associated Press reported.
Egyptian authorities told a news conference that little more than a half-hour after takeoff, a passenger confronted the pilot with a bomb threat. The man originally wanted to land in either Turkey or Cyprus, and after some negotiation, they agreed on Larnaca. The jet touched down at 7:50 a.m.
The man did not have a gun, but there was still a danger to passengers and crew because officials were unsure if the bomb was real or fake. Officials reached out to the families of the hostages to let them know what happened.
We don’t know yet how he got the equipment and whether it is real or not. The reality is we are dealing with it as a real threat, because we can’t take any risks," Egyptian Minister of Civil Aviation Sherif Fathy told the news conference in Cairo while the incident was underway.
He said the hijacker made no concrete demands.
Reuters reported that Cypriot authorities determined that the hijacker's suicide belt was fake, citing the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry. Homer Mavrommatis from the Cypriot Foreign Ministry Crisis Center, told CNN the man was unstable.
Cyprus' Ministry of Foreign Affairs named the suspected hijacker as Seif Eldin Mustafa. The Egyptian government apologized to a man it earlier wrongly named as the hijacker, Al Arabiya reported.
Cypriot state media reported that the hijacker's ex-wife was taken from Larnaca to the airport to talk with the man, who told authorities to deliver a four-page letter to her or he would detonate explosives strapped to his body.
The hijacker has four children with his ex-wife, Marina Paraschou, the Kathimerini newspaper reported. It said the hijacker was a veterinary professor at the University of Alexandria.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told a news conference the incident "has nothing to do with terrorism."
A journalist asked if it was related to a woman to which Anastasiades replied, "There's always a woman involved."
Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation said on its website that the passengers included eight Americans, four Dutch, two Belgians, four Britons, two people from Bali in Indonesia, and one passenger each from France, Syria and Italy. It said 15 crewmembers were taken hostage but did not release their nationalities.
EgyptAir said it was working on getting authorization for a plane from Cairo to land in Larnaca to collect the freed passengers.
Egyptian airport security has been audited by several agencies over the years. The incident comes five months after a Russian passenger plane crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people aboard. An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
Contributing: Jabeen Bhatti and Janon Fisher in Berlin, Jane Onyanga-Omara in London.
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