Two hijackers of a Sudanese plane surrendered to Libyan authorities Wednesday, hours after they had freed their hostages, ending a drama that lasted almost 24 hours.

"They have now surrendered," a Libyan official said from the airport in Kufra, a remote desert oasis in southeastern Libya where the plane was granted permission to land on Tuesday.

The plane, with 95 people on board, was seized Tuesday shortly after leaving Sudan's war-torn Darfur region for Khartoum.
 
The identities of hijackers and their motives remain unclear. According to Libyan officials, the two men claimed to belong to the Sudanese Liberation Movement, a loose rebel group fighting the Sudanese government and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia in the Darfur region.
 
Libyan officials also said the two men wanted to refuel the plane and continue to Paris, where one of the leading SLM figures, Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, lives in exile.

But in an interview with FRANCE 24, Nur denied that the two hijackers were members from SLM.
 
“That is not our manners, that is not our behaviour. It’s about on the one hand diverting the international community’s attention from the genocide being committed in Darfur and on the other, it’s about trying to have me expelled from France,” said Nur.
 
‘Reflecting the growing sense of desperation’ in Darfur
 
According to Roland Marchal, an Eastern Africa specialist at the Paris-based Institute for Political Sciences (SciencesPo), Tuesday’s hijacking could reflect the Darfur population’s growing sense of desperation as the situation in the troubled province worsens.
 
“This is a desperate gesture from people who want to leave a devastated region and a communication coup for the cause of the Darfur rebels,” said Marchal. “They aren’t jihadists, and Khartoum’s efforts to characterise the Darfur rebels as terrorists will not succeed.”
 
Nur’s popularity in the Darfur refugee camps could explain why the two fugitives claimed to be his followers, added Marchal. “Nur has been repeating over and over that it wasn’t worth negotiating as long as the Sudanese government refused to disarm the Janjaweed militias. This made him sympathetic, especially in the West,” he said.

According to Nur, the hijacking could also be a reaction to Monday’s violent intervention by Sudanese security forces in a camp for displaced people at Kalma, near Nyala, Darfur’s main city, where the hijacked plane took off the next day.
 
UN-led peacekeepers said 33 people were buried Tuesday following the clashes between police and camp residents at Kalma.
 
The conflict in Darfur started in February 2003 after Darfur rebel groups began attacking government targets in retaliation for what they say were years of abuse from the Khartoum central government. The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since 2003.
 
Negotiations sponsored by the African Union have so far failed to put an end to the violence and have left the various rebel factions deeply divided.
 
“Rebel leaders have growing political ambitions while the humanitarian situation deteriorates terribly,” warned Marchal. “The inaction of Western politicians and the weak results of mediations carried by the AU and the UN make me pessimistic about the situation in Darfur.”