VALLETTA, Malta -- Egyptian commandos stormed a hijacked airliner and fought a 10-minute gunbattle with Arab terrorists who exploded three grenades among the passengers, leaving 60 people, including one American, dead in history's bloodiest hijacking and rescue.
The commandos, called into action after five passengers were shot in the head and thrown from the EgyptAir plane, blew in a cargo door and stormed the Boeing 737 with automatic weapons ablaze at about 8:15 p.m. Sunday, officials said.
The gunmen, identified today by the Egyptian government as members of a Palestinian faction opposed to the leadership of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, had commandeered Flight 648 Saturday night on a flight from Athens to Cairo.
Officials initially said there were four terrorists but government information director Paul Mifsud said it was believed a fifth accomplice was also aboard.
An Arab identified by the plane's pilot as one of the air pirates survived and was lying unconscious and under guard in a hospital, he said. The Cairo newspaper Al Ahram said Egyptian authorities had asked Malta to keep him in custody for interrogation by Egyptian authorities.
Mifsud said the Egyptian troops crept up to the plane -- the same one forced down by U.S. fighters as it carried the Achille Lauro hijackers out of Egypt -- after the lights were turned off at the field at Luqa Airport in southern Malta before launching their assault.
'The hijackers threw three hand grenades at the passengers and the grenades started a fire that filled the plane with flames and smoke,' he said. '(The commandos) fired with automatic weapons as they went in.'
He said the commandos and terrorists battled for 10 minutes before the last of the hijackers was felled. Mifsud said none of the Egyptian commandos was killed but one had a leg blown off.
'It was terrible. There was smoke everywhere and you couldn't breathe,' said French passenger Georges Gilbert Briard, 36, who told a radio interviewer he had hidden under his seat during the gunfight.
'There was a scuffle on the plane where there was no light. Then there were explosions,' he said. 'I saw a lot of people who had been hurt and others whose bodies were shot up. They got all the terrorists so that's good.'
Mifsud, amending an earlier report, said police removed 57 bodies including those of eight Palestinian children from the plane Sunday and found one more, that of a Canadian infant too young to appear on the passenger list, today.
Another wounded passenger died later on the way to a hospital and a young American woman was murdered by the hijackers early Sunday.
There were 30 survivors, all of whom were hospitalized for smoke inhalation, burns, shrapnel or bullet wounds, hospital officials said. Eighteen female and wounded passengers were taken off the plane earlier.
The dead American was identified today as Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp, a Jewish woman from Oceanside, Calif., who was employed by the Defense Department in Greece. Mifsud said she was one of two Israelis and three Americans picked out to be murdered at 15-minute intervals Sunday to pressure Maltese authorities to provide fuel for the plane.
Each hostage was made to stand at the top of the steps at the main door, shot in the head at close range and then pushed to the tarmac, he said. All but the one American survived.
Jackie Nink Pflug, 30, of Pasadena, Texas, was recovering from surgery to remove a bullet and skull fragments from her brain after being dumped onto the tarmac and left for dead. The third American, Patrick Baker, was reported to be slightly wounded.
Mifsud and the State Department said no Americans were believed to have been still aboard the plane during the assault.
