Cuban officer dead in hijack gets hero's burial

HAVANA, May 4 (Reuters) With a posthumous medal and military procession, Cuba buried an army officer today who was killed by deserting recruits who attempted to hijack a plane to the United States.

Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuna, a hostage who tried to stop the armed hijackers with his bare hands, was given a hero's funeral in his hometown of Pinar del Rio in western Cuba.

Cuban authorities provided no new details of the foiled hijacking at Havana's airport before dawn yesterday by two young soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles.

The recruits commandeered a city bus with several passengers, drove it onto the tarmac at Havana airport's domestic terminal and seized an empty airliner, the Interior Ministry said in a statement yesterday.

The hijackers murdered the unarmed officer. They were later captured, and the other hostages were saved, the statement said. It did not say how the soldiers were subdued.

Residents near the airport reported hearing fierce shooting and photographs of the bus parked next to a Boeing 737 showed the back window shattered by gunfire.

A third recruit was captured before the hijack attempt.

The three soldiers, aged 19 to 21, had been on the run since escaping with their weapons from an army base south of Havana over the weekend. A soldier on guard duty was shot dead and another wounded in the escape, the government said.

The plane they seized was owned by Spain's Hola Airlines and leased to Cuba's national carrier, Cubana, for flights to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, an airline source said.

Armed hijackings are rare in Cuba. Cuba blamed the attempted hijacking on the US policy of encouraging Cubans to escape by offering them virtually automatic US residency.

Reuters ABM VP0205