Airplane reported hijacked in Xinjiang
The AP, the BBC, and now several Western-language media outlets are now reporting the hijacking of an airplane in Xinjiang, according to a brief report from Xinhua. No details are available. TND is looking for more information.
The last time Xinjiang had an incident involving a an airplane was March 2008, when Xinhua reported that a young Uyghur woman, apparently in the company of an older man and under the direction of a Pakistani national, attempted to bomb an airplane with a soda can full of gasoline in order to sabotage the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The fate of the accused girl is still in question, as is the veracity of the state’s narrative of that event. (For the best blogging on this, see Mutant Palm here and here.)
[...] Press, Xinhua is now reporting that there was a bomb threat–not a hijacking–on a Xinjiang-bound airplane. There are few details at the moment, but apparently the flight in question originated in [...]
[...] may have been ethnically motivated. This bizarre series of events comes on the heels of an airplane bomb threat and the July 5th riots. It has been quite the summer in [...]