Word: airbus
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...orange fireball lights up the night sky over Paris. Blown apart by 20 . sticks of dynamite, a 42-ton Airbus A300 carrying 177 people and 15 tons of highly inflammable jet fuel disintegrates and rains burning debris over the capital. Within minutes, parts of the city are in flames -- the devastating conclusion to a suicidal act of terror by four young Algerians...
...persuade the Algerians to allow the elite National Gendarmes Intervention Group (G.I.G.N.) to provide "technical" assistance for a raid on the plane. The antiterrorist unit had been put on alert shortly after the plane's seizure. At 8 p.m. on Dec. 24, some nine hours after the Airbus was taken, about 40 G.I.G.N. troopers took off from a military base near Paris aboard an Air France Airbus A300, identical to the one that had been hijacked. Created in 1974, the G.I.G.N. comprises some 60 "supergendarmes" deployed in four units of 15 men each. Highly trained and motivated, they specialize...
...plane contingent on a resumption of French arms shipments to Algeria. At the end of his patience, Balladur called President Lamine Zeroual just before midnight and told him that "France is ready to receive immediately the Air France plane with its passengers on French soil." Early Monday morning the Airbus took off and headed out over the Mediterranean...
...touched down at Marseilles, ostensibly for a refueling stop. Only minutes earlier, Major Favier and his G.I.G.N. troopers had arrived from Mallorca at an adjacent air base. They spent the morning hours practicing every detail of a rescue operation on their Airbus while Marseilles police chief Alain Gehin negotiated with the hijackers from the control tower...
...gendarmes prepared to make their move, the Airbus started its engines at 4:45 p.m., taxied slowly across the tarmac and stopped within 10 feet of the main terminal. Yahia now issued his final ultimatum: If the plane did not take off by 5 p.m., he said, "we will take action." At 5:08, one of the terrorists fired two shots at the control tower, shattering its bay window. Pasqua immediately gave the green light for the gendarmes' attack...