Passengers Attack Hijacker

MADRID (Reuters) - Passengers on a hijacked Air Mauritania plane ended the ordeal when they stormed the cockpit and beat up the lone gunman after the aircraft landed in Spain’s Canary Islands on Thursday night, Spanish police said.

As armed police surrounded the Boeing 737 on the runway, five passengers and the co-pilot burst into the cockpit and knocked the hijacker to the ground before beating him up, a police spokesman said.

“When we landed at Las Palmas ... we entered (the cockpit) and hit him and knocked him down,” one passenger told television station CNN+.

The fight gave the crew time to let in security forces, who swiftly arrested the man, the police spokesman said.

Spanish police could not corroborate reports from a Mauritanian source on Thursday who said the pilot had deliberately braked hard on landing, knocking the hijacker off his feet and that he had then been jumped on by passengers. The source also said the hijacker had fired two bullets during the scuffle, but that no-one had been seriously injured.

In the post-911 world, hijacking is not the viable alternative of terror it once was. Good job.