Air France Flight 8969 from Algiers arrived in Marseille at around 3.30am on this day 17 years ago. The plane had been scheduled to fly to Paris on 24 December 1994, but four hijackers from the Groupe Islamique Armé, disguised as Algerian presidential police, had seized control before the plane could take off. The hijackers wired the plane with explosives, and tense negotiations with the Algerian authorities followed.
The Algerian authorities had surrounded the plane and refused to allow it to take off, while at the same time refusing to yield to any of the hijackers’ demands. The hijackers proceeded to execute a passenger who was an Algerian police officer, and then another passenger who was an employee of the Vietnamese Embassy. The standoff continued on Christmas Day, with the hijackers killing an employee of the French Embassy. Finally the Algerian authorities gave in to pressure from France and allowed the plane to take off.
Upon landing in Marseille, the plane was surrounded by officers from the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces. Negotiations continued for most of the day until around 5pm when the plane was stormed. A 20-minute gun battle followed, during which all of the hijackers were killed and all of the remaining passengers rescued. The intervention is recognised as one of the most successful anti-terrorist operations in history.