Saturday, January 1 12:49 PM SGT

Indian hostages did not know they were in Afghanistan

NEW DELHI, Jan 1 (AFP) - Passengers at the centre of the Indian Airlines hijack drama spent nearly a week on a runway in southern Afghanistan, without having any idea of where they were, newspapers reported Saturday.

"Kandahar, where's that?" perplexed passengers asked as they finally stepped down from the hijacked Airbus at Kandahar Airport, The Statesman newapaper quoted Indian officials who had flown to Afghanistan as saying.

One hostage, P. Khandwarkar, thought he was in Lahore or elsewhere in Pakistan throughout the ordeal because the hijackers had forced the passengers to keep the window flaps down.

A Nepali, Janak Shrestha, also did not know where he had been confined. One passenger thought the plane was in Oman or probably Bangladesh.

The Statesman quoted a relative of another passenger as saying: "When they got off and were told they were in Kandahar, they had to ask where it was. None of them even realised that they were in Afghanistan."

The Indian Airlines plane was forced by the hijackers to fly to Amritsar in northern India, Pakistan and Dubai after being hijacked on Christmas eve. It landed at Kandahar on December 25.