A passenger plane making its way to Dubai was forced down for an emergency landing Sunday, after a gunman tried to hijack the flight.
The incident occurred on Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight BG147 from Dhaka to Dubai was carrying 142 passengers Sunday, when a passenger carrying a pistol stormed the plane’s cockpit in an attempt to hijack the flight.
The Boeing 737 aircraft landed at Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where local authorities managed to successfully evacuate the plane. Army commandos stormed the plane, and captured the gunman.
AFP reported, however, that the gunman had refused to surrender, and was shot before being taken into custody.
The gunman later succumbed to his wounds.
"We tried to arrest him or get him to surrender but he refused and then we shot him," Major General Motiur Rahman told reporters.
"He is a Bangladeshi. We found a pistol from him and nothing else.”
Bangladeshi authorities later identified the gunman as a 25-year-old Bangladeshi man who may have been suffering from a mental illness.
“From the talks and dialogue we have with him, it seems he is psychologically deranged,” Nayeem Hasan, chief of Bangladesh’s aviation authority, said.
A Bangladeshi lawmaker, MP Mayeen Uddin Khan Badal, who was on board the flight, reported that the gunman had fired a shot during the incident.