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mick75
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The airliner was flying from the Albanian capital Tirana to Istanbul when the hijacking occurred in Greek airspace at 5:58 pm (1458 GMT). The Boeing 737 was escorted by Greek and Italian military aircraft to Brindisi.
A spokeswoman for ENAC told Reuters during the hijack: "As far as we know, the hijackers want to talk with Italian authorities to send a message to the Pope."
Passengers gave conflicting accounts of whether there was more than one hijacker, but they said they saw no weapons and that no violence was used.
Sadri Abazi, an Albanian member of parliament who was on the plane spoke by mobile phone to an Albanian television station. "As he was leaving the plane, one of the hijackers apologized to the passengers in English and Albanian," he said.
CNN Turk's Web site said that, of the 107 passengers, 80 were Albanian and five Turkish. Four beauty queens -- from India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines -- were on the flight, returning from a pageant in Albania, Brindisi police said.
Turkey's Transport Minister Binali Yildirim gave one suggestion of how a hijack could have occurred without the use of weapons. "We have information that they showed a package, but we haven't confirmed that," he told CNN Turk.
Pope Benedict is due to visit Ankara, Istanbul and the ancient site of Ephesus as a guest of Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer from November 28 to December 1.
A number of planes have been hijacked to or from Turkey in the past decade, either by Kurdish rebels or hijackers with Chechen or Islamist sympathies.
(additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Phil Stewart and Nicola Scevola in Rome, Ilaria Polleschi and Antonella Ciancio in Milan, Karolos Grohmann in Athens, Paul de Bendern in Ankara and Daren Butler in Istanbul)
A spokeswoman for ENAC told Reuters during the hijack: "As far as we know, the hijackers want to talk with Italian authorities to send a message to the Pope."
Passengers gave conflicting accounts of whether there was more than one hijacker, but they said they saw no weapons and that no violence was used.
Sadri Abazi, an Albanian member of parliament who was on the plane spoke by mobile phone to an Albanian television station. "As he was leaving the plane, one of the hijackers apologized to the passengers in English and Albanian," he said.
CNN Turk's Web site said that, of the 107 passengers, 80 were Albanian and five Turkish. Four beauty queens -- from India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines -- were on the flight, returning from a pageant in Albania, Brindisi police said.
Turkey's Transport Minister Binali Yildirim gave one suggestion of how a hijack could have occurred without the use of weapons. "We have information that they showed a package, but we haven't confirmed that," he told CNN Turk.
Pope Benedict is due to visit Ankara, Istanbul and the ancient site of Ephesus as a guest of Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer from November 28 to December 1.
A number of planes have been hijacked to or from Turkey in the past decade, either by Kurdish rebels or hijackers with Chechen or Islamist sympathies.
(additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Phil Stewart and Nicola Scevola in Rome, Ilaria Polleschi and Antonella Ciancio in Milan, Karolos Grohmann in Athens, Paul de Bendern in Ankara and Daren Butler in Istanbul)