ISRAEL: Israeli security guards have foiled a suspected hijacking attempt on an El Al Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul, a Turkish airport official and Israel Radio said.
Flight 581 landed safely in Istanbul, the airport official said, adding that one "terrorist" was being held.
Israeli media said that a man, apparently an Israeli Arab, tried to storm the cockpit of the plane before security marshals on the plane caught him. The deputy director of the Israel Airports Authority, Mr Pini Schiff, said the passenger was apparently armed with a pocketknife.
"We heard people saying there was fighting and half a minute later it became clear that from row five or six a man ran amok towards the pilot's cabin, attacked a stewardess and tried to enter the cockpit," an Israeli passenger on the plane told Israel army radio.
"We saw a stewardess running like crazy from the front of the place to the business section . . . she was terrified," said the passenger, identified as Menachem.
El Al is renowned as one of the most security-conscious airlines in the world after a number of high-profile hijackings and attempted hijackings in the 1970s.
"At around 21.30 the signal came out that there had been a terrorist event on the plane. It landed at around 21.50 and the individual was handed over to us. He had been rendered harmless," the Turkish airport official said.
Media reports said about 170 people were on the flight.
Security guards "threw him to the floor with his legs spread and his face to the floor. The passengers were hysterical but the flight attendants were very cool, they calmed us down", he said. The Istanbul airport said the air traffic control tower received a warning as the plane was approaching the airport. - (Reuters)
Peter Hirschberg, in Jerusalem adds: The Israeli army swept back into Hebron on Saturday while right-wing ministers yesterday raised a series of demands, from deporting Mr Yasser Arafat to expanding the Jewish presence in the divided West Bank city. These actions were in response to the ambush by Islamic Jihad gunmen on Friday night in which 12 soldiers and civilian security men were killed.
Troops and armoured vehicles moved into Hebron and placed the 130,000 residents under curfew. Soldiers arrested 41 Palestinians for questioning over the weekend and also blew up several homes which the military said belonged to Islamic Jihad militants.
Last night, a member of Islamic Jihad was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in a village near Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank.
Ten of the 12 Israelis killed in the attack were buried yesterday, including Hebron commander Col Dror Weinberg, the highest-ranking Israeli officer to die since the start of the Intifada uprising. Military observers raised questions yesterday over how three Palestinian gunmen had succeeded in inflicting such a large number of casualties on highly trained troops.
At the weekly cabinet meeting, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, fended off demands by the Foreign Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, for the deportation of the Palestinian leader.
"The timing of the expulsion should be debated in a small forum, but it is clear to everyone he will be removed," said Mr Netanyahu. Mr Sharon told him he was adopting the security establishment's view that expelling Mr Arafat would strengthen rather than weaken him.
On a tour of Hebron early yesterday morning, however, Mr Sharon reportedly told commanders he wanted to ensure territorial continuity between the Jewish enclave in Hebron, where 450 settlers live - many of them among the most radical - and the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba.
Mr Sharon did not say how he planned to accomplish this, but such a move would require confiscating Palestinian homes along the short strip of road which links the two areas and would almost certainly plunge the prime minister into a confrontation with the US.