Monday, January 3 4:20 AM SGT

Plane hijackers received new weapons in Afghanistan: French hostages

NICE, France, Jan 2 (AFP) - The three French hostages among 160 people held on board an Indian Airlines plane for eight days said Sunday that the Muslim hijackers appeared to receive new weapons when the plane landed in Afghanistan.

"On the second day, they received new weapons, modern revolvers, because at the beginning they had old guns and a few grenades," Daniele Goepfert, 54, said at a press conference after arriving at Nice airport.

Goepfert, who was travelling with her 71-year-old husband Gaston, said the weapons appeared the day the aircraft landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which is under the control of the militant Islamic Taliban regime.

Francoise Jougla, 45, a doctor from southwest France, also said she saw evidence that new weapons had been brought into the plane after it arrived in Kandahar.

"I saw that crates had been brought up and I saw them reloading their revolvers, and then I was very scared. I thought I was living my last few hours," she said on French television.

The hijack, which started on December 24 as the Indian Airlines jet flew from Kathmandu to New Delhi, ended on Friday after India agreed to demands from the hijackers that it free three prominent pro-Kashmiri militants.

The five hijackers were permitted by the Taliban authorities to leave as part of the agreement and India said Sunday it had evidence they were on their way to Pakistan.

"We have clear evidence to prove Pakistan's involvement ... the Pakistani establishment is certainly responsible for this," Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra told the private Star TV network.

"We have the names of all the hijackers who are Pakistani nationals and the list of militants they wanted to be released contained (a) majority of Pakistani nationals," he said.

Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, has strongly denied the hijackers have entered its territory.