Kenyan fighters force 707 to land

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 5

Kenyan fighters force 707 to land

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi Kenyan jet fighters have forced an Egyptian Boeing 707 aircraft carrying artillery shells and high explosives to Somalia to land at Nairobi Airport, a Kenyan Government spokesman has said.

The spokesman said that Kenya had expressed concern over Egypt’s arming of Somalia in its fight against Ethiopian forces backed by Russians and Cubans. “This aircraft violated our air space. We had no alternative but to bring it down.” he said.

The official Kenya News Agency said that the charter aircraft was ca-rying 170 boxes each containing two 112 mm artillery shells and high explosives. The Government spokesman said the cargo had been unloaded and confiscated and the Boeing’s crew of seven arrested. The pilot, Captain Medany, told reporters: “My employers only instructed me to fly to Mogadishu. They did not inform me of the nature of the cargo.” The Egyptian Government asked Kenya this week if Egyptian aircraft could fly over northern Kenya on their way to the Somali capital, but permission was refused, the K.N.A. said.

The news agency reported that since the refusal, three Egyptian Boeing 707 s had flown over Kenya, one on Monday and two on Tuesday. The Egyptian Ambassador (Mr Ahmed Marzouk) had been warned that his country must stop delivering arms to Somalia in this way.

Mr Marzouk on Wednesday denied Ethiopian claims that Egypt was involved in a plan to supply arms to Somalia. The first group of 30 Somali students summoned home from courses in the Soviet Union have left Moscow for Rome by commercial airlines on their way back to Mogadishu.

Earlier, Somalia accused the Soviet Union of delaying attempts to bring home the students — 373 in all — and a statement by the Somali Embassy in Paris on Monday said that Moscow was holding them as “hostages.”

The students told Western reporters at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow that they had not beeh detained. But they said they were told that Soviet authorities had turned down requests from the Somali Embassy in Moscow for landing permisssion for special aircraft to take them home. The students were recalled as a guesture of protest by Mogadishu at the Kremlin’s backing for Ethiopia.