The hijackers of a Sudanese airliner surrendered to authorities in Libya on Wednesday after releasing all the passengers, Libya's aviation authority said. The airliner, with 95 people on board, was seized on Tuesday after leaving Sudan's war-torn Darfur region for Khartoum. It was forced to land at the remote Sahara desert oasis of Kufrah in southeastern Libya. The identity of the two hijackers and their motive for seizing the Boeing 737/200 was unclear. The hijackers first released the passengers and two crew members, but kept six crew hostage while negotiations continued. The pilot told Libyan officials earlier that the hijackers were from a branch of the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM), a Darfur rebel group. He said they wanted the plane to be refuelled so they could fly on to meet their leader Abdel Wahed Mohammed Al-Nur in the French capital, Jana reported. But Nur's faction denied the hijackers were its members. Another SLM faction that signed a 2006 deal with Khartoum, which was rejected by Nur, said the passengers had included seven of its officers, three of them members of a transitional Darfur regional government.
