China: Crew Members And Passengers Thwart Six Islamists From Hijacking Airliner

AFP – “Six members of China’s Uighur minority tried to hijack a plane flying from a restive city in the far-western Xinjiang region on Friday but crew members and passengers thwarted them, authorities said.

The plane returned safely to the airport in Hotan city — which has seen a spate of violent clashes between mainly Muslim Uighurs and police due to simmering ethnic tensions — and the suspects were detained, authorities said.

‘The six hijackers are Uighurs,’ Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman for the government of Xinjiang told AFP.

‘For the moment, we don’t know the purpose of the hijack. It’s still under investigation,’ she said, adding at least seven crew members and passengers had been injured in the incident.

Two security personnel were also seriously injured, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The aircraft took off at 12:25 pm (0425 GMT) from Hotan, then 10 minutes into the flight the six suspects tried to ‘violently hijack’ the plane, according to tianshannet.com, the Xinjiang government’s news website.

But crew members and passengers soon brought them under control and the aircraft returned to the city, the website said.

The plane — which belongs to Tianjin Airlines, according to Xinhua — had been bound for the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, it added without providing further details.” Read more.

Flashback: China: Rioters Shout ‘Allah is the Only God’ While Hacking People to Death – “Police shot down 14 rioters who attacked a police station in Hotan city of Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Monday, a Communist Party official in Hotan said Wednesday… The rioters had taken six civilian people and some police staff hostage, and set fire and smashed things in the police station, leaving damaged computers, printers, furniture and clothes scattered around, Metniyaz said. Shouting frantic religious slogans like ‘Allah the only God’, the rioters ran to the top floor and police opened fire to stop them, said an anonymous policeman with the police station.” Read more.