Two hijackers surrendered to Turkish security forces at Antalya Airport in southern Turkey on Saturday and no problem occurred in this incident.(Xinhua/AFP Photo)
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    ANKARA, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Two hijackers surrendered to Turkish security forces at Antalya Airport in southern Turkey on Saturday and no problem occurred in this incident, local private NTV channel reported.

    A passenger plane, operated by the private Turkish airline company AtlasJet, was hijacked when it was heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus early on Saturday morning.

    NTV reported that one hijacker was Palestinian and the other was Turk.

    The hijackers forced open the passenger entry door of the plane and threatened authorities to harm crew members, demanding to negotiate with authorities by pledging to release elderly passengers and children, said the report.

A passenger from the hijacked Turkish aircraft is carried to the hospital in Antalya. Two men claiming to be Al-Qaeda members who hijacked a Turkish plane surrendered at an airport in southern Turkey after hours of negotiations.(Xinhua/AFP Photo)
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    The semi-official Anatolia news agency reported earlier that several passengers were slightly injured when they were trying to flee from the hijacked plane.

    It added that the passengers would be sent to Istanbul by another plane at 14:30 local time (1130 GMT).

    A total of 136 passengers and six crew members were on board the Turkish plane when the two hijackers attempted to storm into the cockpit some 20 to 25 minutes after the plane took off.

    Although the hijackers wanted to fly the plane to Tehran, pilots managed to land the plane at the Antalya Airport for refuelling.

    Earlier report also said that one of the hijackers was speaking Arabic and had a knife and the other was carrying a package which he claimed to be a bomb.

    Later, an escaped passenger told NTV that the two hijackers had claimed they were from al-Qaida.

Turkey sets up crisis desk for hijacked passenger plane

ANKARA, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's Ministry of Transportation Directorate General for Civil Aviation said a crisis desk was established to monitor all developments in a hijacking incident on Saturday morning.

A passenger plane operated by the private Turkish airline company AtlasJet was hijacked when it was heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus earlier in the morning.

Most of passengers manage to flee from hijacked plane in Turkey

ANKARA, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Most of the passengers on the hijacked aircraft of the AtlasJet which was heading for Istanbul from the northern Cyprus, managed to flee from the plane at Antalya Airport in southern Turkey on Saturday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

Sources were quoted as saying that Turkish security forces began releasing elderly passengers and children on board as a result of negotiations with two hijackers after the plane was landed at the airport for refueling.