Two Cuban soldiers tried to hijack a passenger plane to escape to the United States with hostages on Thursday but were arrested after killing an unarmed military officer on board, the government said.

The soldiers, who had escaped from an army base where they were doing military service, hijacked a bus with passengers, took it to the domestic terminal of Havana airport and seized an empty passenger jet before dawn.

They killed one of the hostages, an army lieutenant colonel, when he tried to stop the hijacking, but were then captured by a military unit, the government said in a statement.

"Effective and coordinated action allowed security forces to frustrate the kidnappers' plans and save the lives of the other hostages," it said.

The two young men had been on the run since escaping on Sunday from an army base with two AK-47 rifles. They shot dead a soldier and wounded another in their escape.

Cuba blamed the attempted hijack on the US policy of encouraging Cubans to escape to the United States by offering them virtually automatic residency.

"The responsibility for these new murders falls on the highest US authorities, adding to a long list of terrorist acts that Cuba has been victim of for almost half a century," the government said.

In March 2003, two domestic passenger planes were hijacked to Key West, Florida. A month later, three men who hijacked a Havana Bay ferry in a bid to cross the Florida Straits were executed by firing squad.

The government made no mention of a third recruit being involved in the weekend escape from an army base in Managua, about 25 kilometers south of Havana, home to one of Cuba's largest tank regiments.

A leaflet distributed earlier this week by police searching for the men in Havana identified the recruits as Alain Forbus, 19, Yoan Torres, 21, and Leandro Cerezo, 19, from the eastern province of Camaguey.

It said they had abandoned their guard posts at the tank base and were armed and dangerous.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/05/2007 page5)