An Egyptair domestic flight from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked on Tuesday and landed in Cyprus, Egyptian officials and Cyprus state radio said.

The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation reported that 55 passengers were on board and a crew of seven.

At least one man was thought to be armed. The hijacking occurred in Cyprus's flight information region and the airliner was diverted to Larnaca.

Egyptian civil aviation sources and police confirmed the hijacking and said one man was involved. The plane was an Airbus 320, they said.

After the EgyptAir plane landed at Larnaca airport, the hijacker released all the people onboard except five foreign passengers and the crew, EgyptAir said.

About 60 people, including seven crew, had been onboard, Egyptian and Cypriot officials said.

"The negotiations with the hijacker have resulted in the release of all the plane passengers with the exception of the crew and five foreigners," the airline said in a statement.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane's pilot, Omar al-Gammal, had informed authorities that he was threatened by a passenger wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced him to land in Larnaca.

A Cyprus Foreign Ministry official said he could not confirm the man was rigged with explosives. The hijacking occurred in Cyprus's flight information region.

The plane was an Airbus 320, Egypt's aviation ministry said.

Egyptian state media named the hijacker as Ibrahim Samaha, an Egyptian, but gave no other details about him.

Passengers on the plane included eight Britons and 10 Americans, three security sources at Alexandria airport said.

Israel scrambled warplanes in its airspace as a precaution in response to the hijacking, according to an Israeli military source.

Egypt's vital tourism industry was already reeling from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it was brought down by a terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board, killing all 224 people on board.

Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its proximity to the Middle East.

A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner at Larnaca airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.

In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait in a 16-day siege had a stopover in Larnaca, where two hostages were killed.

Hijacker

The hijacker of an EgyptAir flight, Ibrahim Abdel Tawwab Samaha, is a professor of veterinary medicine at Alexandria University, a staff list on the university website shows.

Samaha is head of the department of food health, the site shows.

Development

Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister said seven people including three passengers remained on board an EgyptAir plane that was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus on Tuesday.

The hijacker had not made any concrete demands so far, said Sherif Fathy, who declined to give the nationalities of the passengers still on the plane.

He declined to identify the hijacker. Egyptian state TV had earlier named a passenger as the hijacker but his colleague later told Reuters he was one of the victims.

Egypt is sending a plane to Cyprus to pick up stranded passengers, some of whom had been traveling from Alexandria to Cairo for connecting flights abroad.

Arrested

The suspected hijacker of an EgyptAir airliner surrendered to authorities at Larnaca airport in Cyprus on Tuesday, Cypriot authorities said.

The hijacker emerged from the aircraft with his hands in the air, state TV said.

"Its over," Cyprus's foreign ministry said in a tweet.