Gunmen demand $1m after hijacking bus: 23 passengers taken hostage in Athens
ATHENS, Dec 15: Two gunmen thought to be Albanians hijacked a Greek bus with 23 passengers on board on Wednesday in Athens and demanded a ransom of one million dollars and a plane to fly them to Russia.
As night fell, 12 hours after the early morning drama began, the gunmen had released 16 hostages in several batches through the day, leaving seven - three men and four women - still captive.
Hundreds of police officials, snipers in camouflage fatigues and special forces were in position around the vehicle. A hostage on board the bus said the gunmen had explosives.
Negotiators were also on the scene as well as dozens of hostages' relatives. As the stand off 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 one million dollars (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 said. But 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. She said they wanted a plane to take them to Russia.
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 take over.
"They want a police bus to leave from in front of our bus, as well as a driver to take them to the airport," Stella 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." 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.
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.
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 said authorities believed the gunmen were Albanians.
"Unless we see their passports we can't be 100 per cent 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 neighbouring country to help with construction work for the Athens Olympics.
MARATHON HIGHWAY: The bus was seized along a highway from the Athens suburb of Marathon, used in the Olympic race of the same name this summer. The first of the 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." He was freed about five hours after the 6am hijack.
"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 seizure of the bus was the first such incident since a spate of bus hijackings in Greece in 1999-2000. First police reports had said there were 26 hostages on Board, but as hostages were released and police learned more about the situation on the vehicle the figure was revised first to 24 and then to 23.
The last such incident was in Nov 2000 when a bus carrying 35 Japanese tourists was hijacked by a man who surrendered to a TV talk show host after a nine-hour stand off. Two hijackings by Albanians in 1999 ended with the two hostage-takers being killed by police. -Reuters
