TIRANA - A passenger aboard a Turkish Airlines plane that was hijacked on Tuesday and forced to land in Italy said the hostages had been worried and panicked but had not been hurt during their ordeal.
"The passengers were panic-stricken, they were worried, but everybody was fine," Sadri Abazi told AFP by telephone.
"The hijackers did not say anything to the passengers. They entered the cockpit. We just saw one of them getting out of the pilot`s cabin, a man in his 30s in sport clothes," Abazi said.
The Turkish Airlines plane was hijacked while flying over Greece during a flight from Tirana to Istanbul.
The plane was seized by two hijackers who had a message for Pope Benedict XVI, who is due to visit mainly Muslim Turkey in late November, Italian civil aviation authorities told the ANSA news agency.
80 Passengers Are Albanian Nationals
Sources from the Albanian Interior Ministry told that the THY jet has 107 passengers and a crew of six. Albanian officials predict that the hijackers were two Turks.
80 of the passengers are believed to be Albanian nationals.
Meanwhile, an Albanian passenger Dimitir Vasi has spoken on his cellular phone to a private Albanian tv station, Top, and indicated that they were not aware of the hijacking incident till the last minute.
10/03/2006 18:13 GMT