Snipers taking up positions.
A shot of the bus with the white police bus clearly visible and the police vehicles blocking the rear.
Time in Greece is midnight.
Posted on 12/14/2004 9:17:28 PM PST by Destro
Albanian terrorists take Greek bus hostages
My Sat news is reporting 2 Albanians took an unknown number of hostages on the bus. Bus driver escaped.
A wave of such terror attacks hit Greece in the 90s.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Bus+hostages+Greece&lr=&sa=N&tab=nw
Let's hope the Greek sharpshooters take out the terrorists as they did in a similar incident in 1999 when the hostage takers were killed. In that incident however a hostage was killed too.
The father of the killed hostage from that incident was on Greek TV earlier in the AM. He was railing against the political incompetence of the PASOK socialists who allowed Greece's foreign policy to fall appart and allow the flood of Albanian crimians.
In additional news, the cameras from the olympic games that were throughtout the city and were deactivated due to privacy protests have been reactivated.
The police helicopter which was circling overhead has left.
Was that hostage killed from a heart attack? (Ori was that the case from the Peruvian hostage rescue and I am mixing the two up?)
Agreed!
PASOK nearly destroyed the nation. The effects of those years will take decades to recover from.
About the Albanians though. Letting them into Greece was not simply a disastrous or shortsighted policy. Many Albanians are really Greek and some are Orthodox Christian and the result of a tremendous effort to re-Christianize the Albanians. Sure, lots of criminal types also came in as well as the descendants of the chasm generation, Albanians who fought against Greeks and for the Nazis in WWII.
What's done is done. Deportations occured in the 90s and now with this incident could occur again. But there are too many interests involved for this to happen I think. The Christianization effort would be damaged if this were to happen.
"...a heart attack?"
Destro. I honestly do not remember. I think you are right...it rings a bell.
two more hostages released.
7-8 hostages remain.
Bus hijacking: Three more hostages released, 14 still on board
Two gunmen who hijacked a KTEL inter-city bus northeast of Athens early on Wednesday released another three hostages at around 4:30 p.m. - two women and one man - police said. This brings the total of hostages still held by the hijackers down to 14.
Another seven hostages, four women and three men, had been released by the hijackers earlier on Wednesday, while three people on board the bus - the driver, the ticket collector and one woman - had managed to escape almost as soon as the hijacking began.
The hijackers had earlier demanded a one-million-euro ransom to free the remaining hostages on board, as well as a driver to take the bus to the airport so that they could leave the country.
The first hostage released was a 55-year-old man with a heart condition, police said, who was allowed to leave the bus at 11:10 a.m. and was picked up by police a short distance away, where police had cordoned off the area around the immobilised bus on central Marathonos Boulevard in the Geraka suburb. The other hostages released were four women and two men. Police said they were in good health but in shock and were receiving help from state psychologists.
The bus was immobilised outside the Mon Repo club on Marathonos Blvd. in Geraka, where the driver managed to escape and take the keys with him after making a sudden stop and opening the doors. The ticket collector also managed to escape, dragging a female passenger out with him. No passengers were reportedly injured, although four gunshots were heard in a space of 20 minutes, fired at approaching police cars.
The perpetrators were reported to be foreign nationals who spoke some Greek, according to eyewitness accounts from passengers, before they were ordered to switch off their cell phones. No children were reported to be on the bus.
The hijackers also ordered the hostages to switch off their cell phones, making communication with the passengers impossible, relatives of the hostages told ANA. Also, all the window shades have been drawn shut, preventing any visual contact.
Police have cordoned off a wide area around the immobilised bus, closing off all traffic in the vicinity. The bus had set off at approximately 5:00 a.m. from Marathon, heading for Athens.
Police sources said the gunmen told police negotiators that they were Russian and wanted the bus to be driven to the airport so that they could board an airplane to Russia. Deliberations were still ongoing between the gunmen and specially-trained police negotiators.
The sources also said a driver has been placed by KTEL at the disposal of the police who, however, wanted to exhaust all prospects of convincing the hijackers to set the hostages free.
Transport and communications minister Michalis Liapis was immediately informed of the incident and was in constant contact with public order minister George Voulgarakis.
Contact with hostage
All the hostages on the hijacked bus were in good health, the father of one of the hostages told ANA later. The ANA spoke with the father of Stella Matara, the only hostage who has her cell phone open and who is in contact with the Greek police.
Stella Matara, 23, is a resident of Nea Makri and for the past three years has been an employee of the Attica KTEL, working initially as a ticket collector and afterwards as a ticket issuer.
Stella said in her third contact with her father, Dimitris Mataras, that she believed that "everything will be alright".
PM Karamanlis being constantly updated on developments, government priority is safety of hostages
Prime minister Costas Karamanlis was being constantly informed since dawn of developments in the hijacking of a KTEL inter-city bus by two gunmen, government sources said.
The sources said that public order minister George Voulgarakis had an open line with the prime minister, adding that the government placed priority on the safety of the hostages, while all relevant ministries and services have been placed on alert.
A government spokesman later expressed the government's grief over the incident, saying that the authorities were making every effort to have a positive outcome to the hostage situation, and also said that the prime minister's scheduled 5:00 departure for Brussels for an EU summit could be delayed.
Driver's account of hijacking
The driver and ticket collector of hijacked the Attica KTEL-inter-city public bus, who managed to escape from the bus earlier, recounted to ANA the sequence of events in the incident.
According to the driver of the Attica KTEL inter-city bus Chrysostomos Mitsou, 33, who was carrying out the first route of the day of the Athens-bound bus from Marathon, the two gunmen boarded the bus at the Pikermi bus stop from the back door.
Mitsou told ANA that the two men sat down in the back seats, and ticket collector Elias Voivontas issued tickets to them. The driver said that Voivontas told him that he had recognised the two men, as they had been passengers on the same bus route several times previously.
Immediately after the bus set off from Pikermi, one of the perpetrators fired a shot towards the roof of the bus, the driver said, adding that he had thought he had a flat tire or that a problem had developed in the vehicle's heater:
"I immediately opened the bus doors, and Elias and I quickly got off. That's when we realised that something was going on inside. We saw people running rowards the front seats, and those two (the hijackers) started firing shots and shouting to the people to sit down. I pulled out a woman who was near my (the driver's) seat, and another one or two people ran out, from what I surmise, and with them the ticket collector and myself," Mitsou said.
Mitsou confirmed earlier reports that there were no children on the hijacked bus.
In a related development, a KTEL employee who is a hostage on the bus, Stella Matara, contacted the Attica KTEL president and told him that the situation inside the bus was good, that the hijackers were not putting psychological pressure on the hostages, and that she was optimistic that everything would turn out alright.
Also, Athens court prosecutor Spyros Mouzakitis was at the police operations center from shortly after the outbreak of the hijacking.
In addition, the Albanian ambassador in Athens has arrived at the scene, and told reporters that he wanted to see for himself whether the hijackers were Albanian, as was rumoured in early reports. He said that if one or both of the hijackers were Albanian, he wanted to help the security authorities and speak with the perpetrators.
Police sources said later that, regardless of the hijackers' claim that they are Russian, the possibility was still open that one or both of the perpetrators were Albanian.
Government expresses grief over bus hijacking, PM Karamanlis delays departure for Brussels to attend EU summit
The government on Wednesday expressed grief over the "sad incident" of the hijacking of a public KTEL inter-city bus earlier in the day, and announced that prime minister Costas Karamanlis will delay his departure to attend the EU summit in Brussels, originally scheduled for 5:00 p.m., until Thursday.
Alternate government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros also added that the Public Order ministry and the Greek Police were making every effort for an "auspicious conclusion" of the incident.
The spokesman said that anyone who could assist in resolving the problem was "welcome", adding that things were at a "delicate point".
He further praised the media for their handling of the issue, and noted that "isolated incidents -- no matter how unpleasant -- do not affect the sense of security of the Greek citizens".
http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=2403267&maindocimg=2402108&service=6
Fox news reporting that if demands are not met by 1am est they going blow up the bus or shoot the passangers
Someone on this forum was insisting the other day that Albanians were never terrorists.
btw...:
Macedonia: Crunch Time in Kondovo: West Reacts to Islamic Fears
Remember this ????
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The UN car was hit after a man flagged it down at the roadside. As the gunmen opened fire with Kalashnikovs, they were heard speaking Serbian. According to a senior security official, however, when one gunman was shot by a survivor, he instinctively screamed in Albanian: "I've been hit."
Afterwards the gunmen were forced to hijack a passing Mercedes when their getaway car failed to start. Security officials said that police officers gave chase for several miles, exchanging fire with gang members, but failed to capture them.
Albanians posed as Serbs to stoke ethnic fires in Kosovo
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&e=6&u=/nm/greece_bus_gunmen_dc
"Greek Bus Hijackers Set Deadline for $1 Million Ransom"
38 minutes ago
World - Reuters
By Karolos Grohmann and Lefteris Papadimas
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "ATHENS (Reuters) - Two suspected Albanians armed with rifles and dynamite hijacked a packed passenger bus in Athens and warned they would "light the fuse" if a Thursday deadline for payment of a $1 million ransom was not met.
Reuters Photo
AFP
Slideshow: Two Gunmen Hijack Greek Bus
Bus Passengers In Hijack Drama
(Reuters Video)
As night fell, hours after the early morning drama began, the gunmen had freed 17 of an original 23 hostages.
But the releases came to an abrupt halt after one hijacker set an 8 a.m. (1 a.m. EST) Thursday deadline for payment of the ransom and vowed not to free any of the remaining hostages -- two men and four women -- until his demand was met."
Only about a quarter of Albanians are active muslim. Another quarter are Greek or Albanian Orthodox or Protestant Christian. Half are atheist/animist. One group to worry about, though, is ex-communists.
Thank you LongTerm Memory.
The time here is 2:10 pm.
thirty minutes to the deadline.
No coverage on the greek sat. TV.
oops update now.
The 17 who have been release are still in protective custody/sequestered of the police. The police want to keep them together and out of the media. Images right now of them bein placed on a blue police bus to be moved out of the area.
One woman had to be hospitalized due to shock.
FOOTNOTE on a happier note: Greece is very beautifull during Christmas. They even put manger scenes in the public squares.
Other channel now breaking in:
Police seem to be moving in...
Situation done.
All hotages released.
Only two remain.
Swat closing in!!!!!!
THEY SURRENDER!
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