Chinese police storm plane after hijack bid

BEIJING, China -- Chinese armed police stormed a plane at an airport in the northeastern city of Shenyang and dragged away a man after a bungled hijack attempt, media reports have said.

The unidentified man tried to hijack China Northern Airlines flight CJ6621 on Wednesday evening as it flew from Dalian to Shenyang, where it was due to make a stopover before flying to Yanji on the North Korean border, an airline source told Reuters news agency.

"We are aware of the incident," another China Northern official told Reuters, when asked about the security scare.

An armed police official at Shenyang's Taoxian International Airport said: "Our soldiers did haul some people off the plane after an incident."

But airline and security officials declined to give more details about the incident.

China suffered a rash of air hijacks in the early 1990s, mostly by people demanding to go to Taiwan. It has since geared up its air safety and adopted new security measures in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America.

In October last year, China set up a special police force of about 2,000 officers in a bid to boost safety on civilian aircraft.

Carrying a knife

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Accounts of the hijack on bulletin boards of unofficial aviation Web sites said the man was an ethnic Korean, accompanied by a child and carrying a knife, and had demanded to be taken to South Korea.

China has a large ethnic Korean population, mostly living in its northeastern provinces.

There are also between 100,000 and 300,000 North Koreans hiding on China's northeastern borders, aid groups say.

About 100 armed police surrounded the plane after it landed in Shenyang and three or four of them stormed the aircraft and led away the man, followed by a small child after about a minute, another message on the bulletin board said.

"A criminal carrying a knife was overpowered by security staff and passengers. They are investigating. After changing the flight crew, the flight continued," said another.

Airport officials in Yanji confirmed flight CJ6621 arrived in Yanji on Wednesday night but said it was about two hours late.

Chinese journalists in Shenyang said they had heard about a hijack on Wednesday evening, but local media carried no reports on it.

China's media is state-owned and does not always report on such incidents.