Hijacked Mauritanian plane flies to Canary Islands

NOUAKCHOTT, Feb 15 (Reuters) An Air Mauritania Boeing 737 passenger plane hijacked on an internal flight has flown to the Spanish Canary Islands after stopping for fuel in the Western Sahara, Mauritanian officials said.

''It has gone to the Canaries,'' a source close to the presidency told Reuters. The head of the Mauritanian state news agency said the plane had already touched down.

Earlier, a police officer at Nouakchott airport told Reuters the plane had been hijacked on a flight to the northern port town of Nouadhibou and had flown instead to Dakhla in Western Sahara to take on fuel.

''There was at least one armed person on board. We don't know his identity,'' the state news agency chief, Moussa Hamed, said.

The police officer did not say how many passengers were on board or how many hijackers were involved, but said they wanted the plane to travel to Paris.

The plane had been originally scheduled to fly on from Nouadhibou to the Canary Islands.

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