Passengers Released Wednesday Morning

Two hijackers have reportedly surrendered, following a day-long hostage crisis involving a Sun Air Boeing 737.

As ANN reported, the Sudanese airliner was hijacked shortly after taking off from Nyala in the war-torn Darfur region Tuesday, on a flight to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The two attackers claimed to be part of a splinter group from the Sudanese Liberation Army, and demanded to be flown to Paris to meet with the group's exiled leader, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur.

The airliner later landed, short on fuel, at a remote World War II-era airfield in Kufra, Libya.

Agence-France Presse reports two hijackers surrendered to Libyan authorities Wednesday afternoon, hours after freeing the 87 passengers onboard. Many were treated for dehydration due to exposure to excessive heat inside the 737's cabin, after the plane's air conditioning failed due to running out of fuel.

The attackers initially held the plane's flight crew, however, as they continued to demand the plane be refueled. Following hours of negotiations, they later gave themselves up, and freed the crew.

"The hijackers surrendered without any violence and the crew are safe and sound," said one Libyan official.

Nur denied involvement in the hijacking, though one SLA faction commander Ibrahim al-Hillo implied the attackers could be Nur sympathisers, reports AFP.

The SLA was one of two ethnic minority groups that rose up against the Arab-led government of Darfur in 2003. The United Nations reports up to 300,000 have since died in the five-year crisis -- far above the official Sudanese estimate of 10,000 -- and another 2.2 million Sudanese forced to abandon their homes.

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