950803

Chinese man

fails to hijack

plane to Taiwan

BEIJING: Security officials overpowered a Chinese man who tried to hijack to Taiwan a China Eastern Airlines plane on a domestic flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou, officials said on Thursday.

The China Eastern Airbus-300, flight number MU5379, was on a Wednesday morning flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou when a passenger tried to hijack the plane, an airline official said by telephone from Shanghai.

Security staff aboard the plane overpowered the hijacker and the plane, carrying a total of 105 passengers and an unknown number of crew, had returned safely to Shanghai, he said.

Airline officials and civil aviation authorities refused to say how the man hijacked the flight or to give any other details.

The hijacking was the second attempt since last December to force an aircraft to Taiwan.

On December 23, a Chinese man armed with a petrol bomb was overpowered and arrested after he tried to hijack to Taiwan an airline carrying 52 other passengers and 22 crew.

That plane was on a flight from the eastern coastal city of Xiamen to Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, when it was hijacked.

Since April 1993, a total of 16 people seeking asylum in Taiwan have hijacked 12 Chinese airliners from China to the Nationalist-ruled island.

China and Taiwan, rivals since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, agreed early this year on repatriating hijackers after Beijing conceded Taipei would reserve the right to keep some hijackers if it finds they have valid political or religious reasons.-Reuter