Photo: AP

Early this morning a man claiming he had a bomb hijacked an EgyptAir flight and forced the pilots to land in Cyprus.

There were reportedly 56 passengers and seven crew members aboard the Airbus, which was en route from Cairo to Alexandria when the man—identified by officials as Seif El Din Mustafa—told pilots he was wearing a suicide belt and demanded they make an emergency landing.

Cypriot officials tell the Times Mustafa wanted the pilots land the plane at the Istanbul airport in Turkey but allowed them to land at Cyprus’s Larnaca Airport instead after they told him there was not enough fuel to make it. A spokesman for the flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 tells the AP the pilots did not signal a distress call over their transponder.

As the events unfolded in real time, authorities confused some details, initially telling reporters there were 81 people aboard. Egyptian authorities also initially misidentified the suspect as Ibrahim Samaha, an Egyptian national and professor from the University of Alexandria, who turned out to be a passenger on the flight.

“We had no idea what was going one,” Samaha told the BBC after calling to correct their report. “After a while we realized the altitude was getting higher, then we knew we were heading to Cyprus. At first the crew told us there was a problem with the plane and only later did we know it was hijacked.”

Upon landing at the Larnaca Airport, Mustafa apparently allowed women and children to leave the plane. Other Egyptian passengers were later released and at least one man appeared to escape through a cockpit window.

By 9:40 a.m., the AP reports, only four foreign passengers and the flight crew remained onboard.

It’s still unclear why Mustafa hijacked the plane, though Cyprus’ president Nicos Anastasiades tells reporters it was not terrorism.

According to the New York Time, Mustafa gave negotiators a letter “demanding the release of prisoners from Egyptian jails.” Reuters also indicates he “asked for the release of female prisoners in Egypt. But NPR reports the letter may have addressed to his ex-wife.

“This guy landed in Cyprus, apparently requested political asylum and has also, according to Cyprus media reports, tried to get a letter to the ex-wife who’s in Cyprus and has requested that she be brought to the airport,” Leila tells our Newscast unit.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told reporters that the hijacking is “not something to do with terrorism.” When a reporter asked if it had something to do with a woman, he replied, “Always, there is a woman.”

Whatever the motive, the man eventually surrendered and is now in police custody.