Conditions on Plane ‘Appalling’

LONDON —  One of the British women released from a hijacked Kuwaiti airliner in Iran said Wednesday that conditions on the plane, seized by Arabic-speaking gunmen on a flight from Thailand to Kuwait, are appalling.

The Daily Mail newspaper talked by phone to some of the 24 women, including 10 Britons, who were released by the hijackers early Wednesday. The women were in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, but Kuwait Airways said it plans to evacuate them to Kuwait.

“Conditions aboard the plane are really terrible, appalling,” the popular tabloid quoted Susan Carew-Jones, 35, as saying. “There’s very little oxygen. . . .”

“We are besides ourselves with worry,” said Carew-Jones, whose husband, David, a management consultant with a subsidiary of Lockheed, is one of 11 British men being held.

Jean Sefton, who was traveling with her husband and two daughters, aged 12 and 14, said: “It all happened too quickly for words. One minute I was asleep, the next I was being nudged in the ribs by my husband and I saw one of the hijackers in the aisle.

“A couple of hijackers spoke English and asked if we wanted pillows and drinks and things. They talked a bit to the children.”