Hijacked India Plane Turned Away From Kabul
02:03 p.m Dec 24, 1999 Eastern

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Five heavily armed hijackers seized an Indian Airlines plane carrying 189 people, including foreigners, Friday and forced it to land in Pakistan before taking off again, apparently for Afghanistan or the Middle East.

Indian officials said a crew member had radioed that the unidentified hijackers had killed four passengers, but India's civil aviation minister later told CNN he had been assured by Pakistani authorities that all passengers were safe when the plane was on the ground in the city of Lahore.

A Pakistan government official said the pilot had told airport authorities ``they are taking the plane to Kabul'' after it was refueled in Lahore after being hijacked en route from the Nepali capital of Katmandu to New Delhi.

However, the Afghan Islamic Press reported that Afghan's ruling Taliban movement had turned the plane away from Kabul, and Indian officials said it may now be heading for the Gulf.

``The plane asked to land in Kabul but we have not given permission,'' Afghan Civil Aviation Minister Mullah Akhtar Mansoor told the agency from the southern city of Kandahar.

Indian Civil Aviation Secretary Ravindra Gupta told reporters in New Delhi the government had alerted its missions in the Gulf, adding that the plane could be heading for Dubai.

CNN quoted Indian Civil Aviation Minister Chaman Lal Gupta as saying the plane would have to go elsewhere, possibly Tehran. He said India was in touch with all governments in the region for help in arranging possible landing rights and ensuring the safety of the passengers and crew.

The identity of the five hijackers and their goals were not immediately known. Some hijackings in India in the past have been by Kashmiri or Sikh separatists.

Media reports said the hijackers, who were speaking in Hindi, were carrying AK-47 rifles, grenades and revolvers.

They had also demanded food for the passengers while in Lahore, but no other demands had been made public.

A Pakistani government official said the plane had enough fuel for six hours of flying. It left Lahore around 1700 GMT.

Depending on the type of engines, an Airbus A300 with 266 passengers has a range of 4,257 miles (6,852 km) to 4,775 miles (7,685 km), which could easily take it from eastern Pakistan to the Middle East or even Europe.

The plane was hijacked shortly after 5 p.m. (1130 GMT) and first diverted to the Indian city of Amritsar near the Indian-Pakistan border, where it briefly landed before taking off for Lahore, where it stayed on the ground for about 2- hours.

Officials at the Amritsar airport said the hijackers opened fire and killed the four passengers while the plane was on the ground and the plane took off soon afterwards.

FOREIGNERS AMONG PASSENGERS

Indian Airlines said there were 178 passengers aboard and 11 crew on Flight IC814.

The passengers included 150 Indian nationals, four Indian children, eight Nepalese, four Swiss, four Spaniards, two French, a Japanese, a Canadian, a Belgian, an Austrian, an Italian and a U.S. national, said airport officials in India and Katmandu, capital of Nepal.

Indian Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh told reporters after an emergency meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security in New Delhi said he had been in touch with his Pakistani counterpart over the crisis.

``We have no confirmed news yet of any killing or the identity of the hijackers or their demands,'' he said.

Pakistan airport officials said they allowed the plane to land in Lahore because it had almost no fuel left as it circled the city.

New Delhi has consistently accused Pakistan of sponsoring the decade-old separatist insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir state, but Islamabad says it only provides moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.

The neighbors stood on the brink of a fourth war earlier this year when Indian forces launched a massive offensive to oust heavily armed intruders from strategic heights near a cease-fire line with Pakistan in Kashmir.