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Within five minutes of the assault a score of captives escaped the inferno, jumping from emergency exits or dropping from the wings. But 57 passengers died, including all nine of the children the hijackers had refused to release. Amid the pandemonium, Captain Galal suddenly found a chance to take personal revenge against the leader of the hijackers, a man who identified himself as "Nabil." After the commando assault began, said Galal, Nabil hurled a grenade toward the rear of the plane. Realizing he had taken his eyes off Galal, Nabil turned and fired at him. The pilot ducked, and the bullet grazed his head. Seizing a fire ax, Galal felled the terrorist with one swing, then jumped to safety. In the aftermath of the horror of Flight 648, many questions remained unanswered. Were the terrorists, whose trip was indeed believed to have begun in Tripoli, directly linked to Gaddafi? Were they agents of Abu Nidal, the Palestinian renegade who is bent on undermining Mubarak and other Arab moderates? Had they somehow smuggled their weapons onto the plane in Athens, despite what Greek authorities insisted had been five security checks of passengers boarding Flight 648, or had the weapons been taken onto the plane clandestinely in Cairo earlier in the day?
The best and perhaps only hope of answering those questions may lie in the interrogation of the one of two hijackers who survived. One of the men was identified by Maltese authorities as Omar Marzouki, a 20-year-old Tunisian. At week's end Marzouki was known to be at a hospital in Valletta, recovering from gunshot wounds in the chest and abdomen, and could not be questioned. Although he was under heavy guard, Egyptian security officials feared he might be targeted for assassination by his mysterious mentors. In the meantime the Egyptians requested his extradition, a move that they expected Malta to honor.
Despite the outcome, the Egyptians defended their decision to take action when they did. "We were compelled to do the best we could to save those lives," declared Osama el Baz, Mubarak's political adviser. "We had to fight terrorism, and fight it hard." --By William E. Smith. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Valletta and Dean Fischer/Cairo