Student hijackers free hostages

Six university students armed with hand grenades and pistols who seized an Ethiopian plane with at least 50 passengers and diverted it to Khartoum have released all their hostages and surrendered, officials said today.

‘‘All of them have been released,’’ said Ghazi Salah el-Din Atabani, Sudan’s minister of information. ‘‘The hijackers will be tried according to international laws.’’

There were no immediate reports of serious injury among the hostages.

The end of the hijacking came hours after government officials last night began negotiating with the hijackers, who included five men and one woman. Earlier reports said there were nine attackers.

A few hours after the plane landed in Khartoum, the hijackers released 11 women and children.

Atabani said earlier that the hijackers had been seeking political asylum.

The television report said the hijackers, students at Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University, had demanded meetings with US and British diplomats. It wasn’t immediately clear if that had occurred.

The United States is represented in Sudan by charge d’affaires Glenn Warren, but it was not clear if he was in the country. And a British diplomat said that he was not aware of any call for involvement by his country.

Sudan’s foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite television that the hijackers landed in Khartoum because they were running out of fuel, adding he did not know what their intended destination was.

The Antonov 12 aircraft originated in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and was heading to northern Ethiopia when the hijackers seized the plane, the TV report said. It landed at Khartoum airport at 6.20 pm (1620 BST), it said.

A crew member who managed to escape out of the back of the plane said the hijackers were armed with hand grenades and pistols, the TV report said.

It was not clear which carrier owned the flight. An Ethiopian Airlines official said he had no information about a hijacking.

Authorities barred journalists from the airport, allowing only state television to enter.

The United States withdrew its ambassador to Sudan in 1997, saying the government supported terrorism and had an appalling human rights record. For security reasons, diplomats rotate in and out of the embassy, which operates with a staff of three.

The hijacking follows clashes last week in Addis Ababa between university students and police the worst violence in the Ethiopian capital since 1993. At least 41 people were killed in fighting sparked by week-long protests by students demanding greater academic freedom.

On Thursday Ethiopian officials began releasing hundreds of students arrested during the riots. Students so far have refused to return to Addis Ababa University, where authorities were requiring them to sign statement accepting a ban on demonstrations.

Student unrest in the 1960s and 1970s preceded upheavals that forced Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, to institute reforms and ultimately led to him being ousted from power in 1974.

Students were also influential in organising resistance to the military regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991.