Daily Mail:

Passengers overpower plane hijacker after he storms cockpit shouting he had bomb

By Daily Mail Reporter

• Masked man struck 50 minutes from touchdown on Oslo to Istanbul flight

Passengers aboard a Turkish Airlines flight from Oslo over-powered a would-be hijacker who tried to storm the cockpit claiming he had a bomb.

The Boeing 737-800, which was carrying 60 passengers, including a child, and seven crew members, was en route from the Norwegian capital to Istanbul.

The man, identified as 40-year-old Cumar Yasar, put on a ski mask and began shouting 'I have a bomb' before two passengers were able to restrain him.

When police in Istanbul entered the plane to arrest Yasar they found one of the passengers sitting on him.

Officers said the man was a Turk who had demanded that the plane return to Norway.

'I was sitting at the front end of the plane and I heard voices at the back of the plane around 30 minutes before we landed," said Lelya Kilic, another of the passengers.

'I saw a fight between passengers and a man with a mask, carrying a device that looked like a radio handset.'

The hijacker was identified a Turkish national from a Kurdish village in the southeastern region of Anatolia.

'A person in the back of the plane put on a mask and threatened to blow up the plane in the air,' passenger Salim Tahar told Norwegian television network TV2.

'The man spoke Turkish and demanded the plane return to Oslo.'

He told TV2 that the man appeared to be holding something but it was not clear what.

'We were 50 minutes away from touchdown when I heard a lot of noise at the back of the plane,' he said of the timing.

He added that the crew moved the other passengers to the front of the plane, while the would-be hijacker remained at the back.

A Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 aircraft just like this one was the plane targeted in the attempted hijack. It was carrying 60 passengers and seven crew

When the aircraft landed in Istanbul, Turkish police entered the plane and arrested the man. The bomb was found to be a fake.

The hijacker was identified a Turkish national from a Kurdish village in the southeastern region of Anatolia.

The Anatolia news agency reported that police who interrogated Yasar found he suffers from psychological problems.

It has also been reported that he was carrying a card identifying him as a disabled man.

There were no reports of anyone being hurt in the incident.