Woman Yemeni pilot overpowers Iraqi hijacker

Khaldeq had convinced the hijacker, who had fired two shots from his pistol without injuring anyone, to let the plane land in Djibouti for a refuelling stop, said the head of Djibouti’s security forces, Hassan said.

The hijacker, claiming to support Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, diverted the Yemenia Boeing 727 to Djibouti from an internal flight between Sanaa and Taiz, 270 km south of the Yemeni capital.

All the passengers were released safe and sound, the sources said.

“Four Americans from the US Embassy in Sanaa, including Bodine, were on board the plane,” Dona Visocand, economic officer at the US Embassy in Sanaa, told AFP.

Bodine and Yemen’s Ambassador to Washington, Abdel Wahab Al-Hajri, were travelling to a meeting with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is touring the country ahead of municipal elections on February 20, Sanaa officials said.

“Bodine was heading for Taiz to meet President Saleh for talks on the USS Cole,” Visocand said without elaborating. Bodine, who is normally accompanied by a team of armed bodyguards, has been at the forefront of the investigations into the October 12 blast on the Cole warship in the southern Yemeni Port of Aden that Left 17 US sailors dead.