Baghdad claims pilgrim plane to Mecca missing

An Iraqi airliner which flew more than 100 elderly Muslims to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca has gone missing…

An Iraqi airliner which flew more than 100 elderly Muslims to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca has gone missing, the official Iraqi News Agency said.

The Iraqi Airways plane "which went to the holy sites today, has not returned as scheduled, for unknown reasons," INA said.

Diplomatic sources said earlier that the United States had asked Saudi officials to seize the plane but that they had refused. But Washington denied making any such request.

"It is untrue," a State Department spokesman, Mr James Foley, said. "We did not ask the Saudis to do any such thing. We have nothing to do with the plane."

READ MORE

The plane had arrived in the Saudi city of Jeddah on the Red Sea with 111 passengers on board yesterday afternoon on the second such flight in as many days, defying an eight-year-old UN air embargo and US protests.

INA did not say if the plane had taken off again from Jeddah, the Red Sea port just to the west of Mecca, or whether it had been prevented from leaving the Saudi kingdom.

"No information is available about the reasons for the delay of the Ilyushin-76," the agency said.

Saudi airport authorities declined comment on the fate of the plane and the information office at Jeddah airport said it did not know if it had taken off again for Baghdad.

The plane - an ageing Russian-built Ilyushin-76 - was taking mostly elderly pilgrims, including 37 women, unable to travel by road to Mecca. INA did not say how many people were to make the return trip.

Iraq had sent a first plane to Jeddah on Tuesday, a flight condemned by Washington and London as a violation of the UN embargo imposed after the 1990 Kuwait invasion.

Around 18,000 Iraqis were also massed at a Saudi desert border post yesterday waiting to make the trip to Mecca, a pilgrimage required of all Muslims at least once in their lifetime provided they have the means to do so.

Mr James Rubin of the US State Department charged that the hajj flight was another "cynical ploy" by President Saddam Hussein and insisted it violated UN sanctions, although Washington would not interfere. "Iraqi pilgrims are not a target," he said.

"We will not take any action that would put innocent Iraqi pilgrims in danger."