Posted on 12/15/2004 7:41:22 AM PST by E_E_I_O
ATHENS (Reuters) - Two gunmen thought to be Albanians hijacked a Greek bus with 26 passengers on Wednesday and demanded a $1 million ransom and a plane to fly them to Russia.
Hundreds of police officers, snipers in camouflage attire and special forces took up positions around the vehicle. A hostage on board the bus said the gunmen had explosives.
About five hours after the 6:00 a.m. hijack, five hostages -- three women and two men -- were freed by the gunmen. Several hours later, two more hostages, a man and a woman, were released leaving 19 hostages aboard.
After a visit to the hijack scene by Albania's ambassador and telephone talks between the law and order ministers of Greece and Albania, a senior police official told Reuters authorities believed the gunmen were Albanians and ruled out suggestions they might be Russians. ``Unless we see their passports we can't be 100 percent certain, but we are operating now on the belief they are from Albania,'' the official said.
Hundreds of thousands of Albanians live in Greece. Many came from the neighboring country to help with construction work for the Athens Olympics.
As the standoff gripped the nation, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis postponed his departure for a European Union summit in Brussels by one day until Thursday. ``The figure of $1 million (ransom) has been mentioned in negotiations with the hijackers, but they have given no other details regarding where they want to go to,'' a senior police official told Reuters.
Stella Matara, a hostage still on the bus, told state-run television in a mobile phone call that the hijackers planned to release all women prisoners once a driver joined the vehicle.
The original driver, a ticket collector and a woman passenger managed to escape from the bus in the first seconds of the hijack when shots were fired during the takeover.
``They want a police bus to leave from in front of our bus, as well as a driver to take them to the airport,'' Matara said.
``As soon as the driver comes, they will release all women. At the airport, they want a plane to take them to Russia, and then they will release the rest of the hostages,'' she added.
``They have guns, they have dynamite.''
The bus was seized along a highway from the Athens suburb of Marathon, used during the Olympic race of the same name this summer, police said.
The seizure of the bus was the first such incident since a spate of bus hijackings in Greece in 1999-2000.
NEGOTIATORS ON SCENE
The first of the five hostages freed, a grey-haired man who looked to be in his 50s, stepped out of the bus with his hands raised and walked to waiting police.
``My dad has a heart condition,'' Vassilis Bratsiakos said. ``I am just happy he is well and far away from the bus.''
There have been no reports of injuries, but live television showed one gunman approaching the front of the bus and firing off two warning shots.
``I don't care what they are or who they are. I want them to release my wife,'' said an elderly man who was among dozens of relatives of hostages who rushed to the scene.
``She told me she is fine and things are quiet on the bus but she sounded terrified.''
The curtains in the bus windows were closed, blocking views inside, and a police helicopter hovered above. Television pictures had earlier shown one man carrying a rifle and standing inside the bus near the front seats.
This is the first such incident since a November 2000 hijack of a bus carrying 35 Japanese tourists who were taken hostage by a man who surrendered to a TV talk show host after a nine-hour standoff. Previous hijackings, some involving Albanians, occurred in 1999.
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One is a Chechin named Hassen. Yup, Islam International, the organization that the brilliant Neo-Cons tell us doesn't exist, strikes again.
"One is a Chechin named Hassen.""
When did that come out?
(obscure "Cheers" reference... carry on.)
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