Captors' Motives Unknown At This Time

ANN REALTIME REPORTING 08.26.08 1330 EDT: Very little hard information is known at this moment... but CNN reports a Sudanese airliner was hijacked shortly after taking off from Nyala in the country's war-torn Darfur region Tuesday.

The airliner has since landed in Kifra, Libya, according to media reports. At this point, it's not known how many passengers are onboard the plane, or what the hijacker-or-hijackers' intentions may be, though some local media outlets say the three hijackers are part of a Darfur rebel group.

Indeed, such hijackings are not uncommon -- two Sudanese flights were commandeered in 2007 alone. One later landed safely in Khartoum, the plane's original destination; the second diverted to Chad, where it also made a safe landing. In both cases, the hijackers were taken into custody and no passengers were harmed.

In at least one of those cases, the hijackers said they wanted to bring international attention to the situation in Darfur, where a violent ethnic and tribal war has raged for over five years between Sudanese officials, and a number of rebel groups.

FMI: www.caaofsudan.org/ENGLISH/tender_r.htm