The hijackers of a Sudanese plane have surrendered after releasing all passengers unharmed.
The airliner was hijacked yesterday after leaving Sudan's troubled Darfur region and was forced to land in the remote Sahara desert oasis of Kufrah.
The hijackers of the Sun Air Boeing 737 had demanded fuel to fly to Paris.
The pilot told Libyan authorities the hijackers claimed to be members of a branch of the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM), a Darfur rebel group.
'They said they belong to SLM's Abdel Wahed Nur who lives in Paris. They had coordinated with him to meet them in the French capital,' Jana quoted the pilot as saying.
The SLM faction led by Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur strongly denied the hijackers were members of the group.
The Jana agency said Libya granted permission for the plane to land after the pilot told the authorities the aircraft was running out of fuel.
Three senior members of a former Darfur rebel movement, which has signed a peace accord with the government, were among the passengers, a spokesman for their group said.
Members of the Darfur regional government were also on board the hijacked plane, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said.
The plane, belonging to the Khartoum-based private airline Sun Air, took off from the south Darfur capital for Khartoum.
Egyptian authorities refused it permission to land in Egypt and the plane changed course towards Libya, Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera said.
The Darfur region has been riven by conflict since a rebellion against Khartoum's rule broke out more than five years ago.
International experts say more than 2.5m Darfuris have been driven from their homes and 200,000 people killed. Sudan puts the death toll at about 10,000.
The insurgents are split into more than a dozen factions.
