A gunman hijacks aid plane in South Sudan and is arrested after a refueling stop

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — A gunman hijacked a small turboprop plane belonging to an evangelical Christian aid group in South Sudan on Tuesday, demanding the pilot fly the aircraft to Chad, police said. The suspect was arrested hours later after the plane landed in a northern town.

No one was injured and an investigation into the incident was underway.

The aircraft — a Cessna Grand Caravan, owned and operated by Samaritan’s Purse — left Juba, South Sudan’s capital, in the morning when the gunman took control of the plane. The aircraft was carrying medical supplies to the far northeast county of Maiwut, where Samaritan’s Purse is providing medical assistance.

Police said the gunman had snuck onto the plane and hid in the rear cabin before takeoff. He was identified as Yasir Mohammed Yusuf, a resident of the Abyei Administrative Area, an oil-rich territory disputed between South Sudan and Sudan.

His motives for the hijacking were not known, nor his reasons for wanting to fly to Chad, a central African country that does not share a border with South Sudan but is in the same region.

After circling for several hours, the pilot told the suspect the plane needed to refuel and then landed in the northern town of Wau, where the gunman was taken into custody, according to Santino Udol Mayen, a spokesman for the police of Western Bahr el Ghazal state, where Wau is located.

Mayen told The Associated Press that the suspect was wearing a reflective vest with the logo of an air charter company with operations at Juba International Airport.

Paul Antrobus, the company’s managing director, said no one with the suspect’s name was employed by the company.

Melissa Strickland, a spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse, expressed gratitude in a written statement and said the aid group was thankful for the security forces’ swift action to bring about “a safe outcome.”

On Nov. 25, a plane chartered by the same aid group to carry food supplies and operated by the South Sudan-based company Nari Air, crashed in Unity State, in the country’s north, killing all three crewmembers on board.