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It is too early to determine whether Iran was behind Monday’s alleged attempt to sabotage Flydubai Flight FZ1073, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in overnight media interviews.
However, the Israeli premier said his country would help determine the motives of the attacker and any other accomplices. Netanyahu spoke to Fox News’s Sean Hannity and CNN in the interviews, given overnight, after he had told the media earlier in the day that a co-pilot had stabbed the captain of the Boeing 737, which was carrying 174 people, including 174 Israeli citizens, and attempted to crash the plane over Israel.
He described the incident as “an extremely serious security incident” that had been averted by the “heroic” actions of the passengers and crew on board, preventing what he termed “a 9/11-type disaster.” Flight FZ1073 took off from Dubai’s Airport on Monday at 1:15 p.m. Local time, and had been en route to Tel Aviv, in Israel, when it suddenly began plummeting downwards, issuing a distress signal, as it dropped some 14,000 feet in less than half a minute, according to the flight-tracking service, Flightradar24, cited by the news service Reuters.
The plane managed to make an emergency landing at the Al Mulayah Airfield in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All 174 passengers, including the majority of Israeli citizens on board, were safely returned to Israel.
The two pilots on board, including the captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, were hospitalized for wounds sustained during the attempt to sabotage the plane. The captain is reported to be in stable condition, according to the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia.
A Shin Bet delegation is set to travel to the UAE in order to conduct security talks with the Emirates’ authorities, ahead of the return of the hundreds of Israeli travelers who were stranded in Dubai following the Flydubai suspension of all flights to and from Israel pending an investigation into the causes of the near catastrophe.
In his initial assessment of the attempted sabotage, Netanyahu said that a pilot who was identified as the co-pilot of FZ1073, an Omani national, had attacked the captain with a weapon, in an attempt to bring down the plane carrying 174 people over Israel. The stabbed captain had managed to open the cockpit door and the passengers and crew, including another pair of pilots from Flydubai who were traveling on the plane as passengers, had collectively managed to overpower the co-pilot and take control of the plane in order to land safely in Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu said that he had spoken with Saudi authorities and that they had arrested the pilot and were questioning him in connection with the attempted sabotage of the plane carrying 174 people, mostly Israelis, on Monday. An Israeli passenger, Yaniv Hayun, had entered the cockpit and subdued the attacking co-pilot with the help of another crew member, enabling the two other pilots from Flydubai to take over the plane, in order to land safely with all 174 passengers on board, the premier said, hailing the heroic actions of the passenger and the two pilots in saving the lives of 174 people.
Netanyahu had written on his social media pages earlier in the day, saying that he had met the heroic Yaniv Hayun and captain Machchhar, who had fought back against his attacker and opened the cockpit door, enabling the passengers to overpower the co-pilot and take control of the plane in order to save 174 lives. The premier wrote that “we will get to the root of this attacker, whether he had accomplices, whether Iran was behind it.
It is too early to say.” In his interview with Hannity, Netanyahu said that he had spoken with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and that the two leaders had agreed that Israel would join the investigation into the cause of the attempted sabotage. The premier said that he had received no specific warning or intelligence about any possible threat to the flight, although there were threats of possible attacks by Iranian jihadist proxies against Israelis abroad, which were generally known to Israeli security services.
As a result of the attempted sabotage, Netanyahu said that he had instructed all relevant security institutions to prepare and to increase security in order to deal with any possible “worst case scenarios” that may arise, as well as to tighten checks on pilots flying into Israel.
The incident was described by Defense Minister Israel Katz as an “attempted jihadist attack” that had been thwarted by heroic Israeli passengers. Flydubai has suspended all flights to and from Israel, pending an investigation into the causes of the near disaster, and cautioned against speculating about the possible causes of the attempted sabotage of the plane.
