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EgyptAir Flight Hijacker Believed to Have Suicide Belt but cause not Terror

The hijacker of EgyptAir’s flight 181 from Alexandria to Cairo on Tuesday morning indicated he was wearing a suicide bomb belt, but as the drama played out it seems that the cause of the hijacking was the hijacker’s personal problems rather than terror. At press time, the identity of the hijacker remains uncertain, media reports indicating the person named might be a passenger rather than the suspect. Police reported bringing the former wife of the hijacker to the Larnaca airport in Cyprus, where the plane landed after being diverted from Cairo. The plane, an Airbus A320 which carried 56 passengers and crew of 7, lost contact with air control one-half hour into the fight.  Once on the ground in Larnaca, most were released with the exception of five foreign passengers. The incident is the second gross breach of Egyptian airport security in five months, since a bomb that was smuggled aboard a Russian aircraft exploded over the Sinai Peninsula killing all 224 people aboard.