Turkish police rescue hostages

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- A passenger claiming to have a bomb held two flight attendants hostage aboard a plane at Istanbul airport Friday before police stormed the aircraft and freed them.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said no one was injured. The hostage-taker, a Turkish citizen identified by police as Ali Ilker Urbak, was being questioned by anti-terrorism police.

The 28-year-old man held what was he claimed were dynamite sticks as he seized the flight attendants after the Turkish Airlines aircraft from Ankara landed. The other passengers had already left the aircraft.

After about two hours police stormed the aircraft. The sticks turned out to be candles.

"It's over," Aksu said. "Our police made a successful operation."

The whole operation lasted 30 seconds, Istanbul Police Chief Hasan Ozdemir said.

The man's motives were unclear. Istanbul Deputy Gov. Saim Eskioglu said the man had asked to be flown to Russia, suggesting a possible Chechen link.

Star television and news agency Anatolia said he was protesting a U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Aksu, the interior minister, said the man had no known ties to any radical groups. A senior police officer said the hostage-taker appeared to be drunk.

Officials said the man waited for passengers to leave the plane, then took the flight attendants to the rear of the plane by telling them he had explosives.

Urbak caused panic when he briefly lit and then extinguished one of the candles, Eskioglu said. He said police soon realized the man was drunk or deranged and was "not of full mental capacity to carry out the hijacking."

Kurdish, leftist and radical Islamic groups are active in the country and have carried out attacks in the past.

Chechen militants have also carried out hijackings and hostage-takings in Turkey to protest Russia's military campaign in Chechnya.

In 1998, a man carrying a teddy bear he claimed was stuffed with explosives commandeered a Turkish Airlines flight. The incident ended when he was overpowered by other passengers.

Seven months later a man brandishing what turned out to be a toy gun hijacked another Turkish jetliner. He was persuaded to surrender.

A third hijacking that year ended in bloodshed when security officials stormed a plane on the tarmac at Ankara airport and shot dead a Kurdish rebel armed with a hand grenade. No passengers were hurt.