Word: ovechkin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...accounts, the Ovechkins of Siberia were a remarkable family. After giving birth to the tenth of her eleven children, Ninel Ovechkin was awarded the Soviet title of "Hero Mother." After her husband died in 1984, she reared her seven sons and four daughters by herself in the city of Irkutsk, about 2,600 miles east of Moscow. The boys started a popular local jazz band called the Seven Simeons and recently performed in Japan...
...miles away. Their luggage included a double-bass case, which was too big to pass through the airport X-ray machines but which family members insisted was too valuable to put in the cargo hold. About halfway through the long journey, the trouble began. Two of the Ovechkin sons produced sawed-off rifles from the instrument case and handed the flight attendant a note, threatening to blow up the plane unless it was diverted "to a capitalist country, to London...
Explaining that the jet had insufficient fuel, the flight crew told the hijackers they would have to land at the Finnish town of Kotka. Instead, the three-engine jet touched down at an airstrip outside Leningrad, where Soviet officials attempted to negotiate with the family. But after the Ovechkins shot and killed a flight attendant, an antiterrorist team stormed the plane. As the men rushed the jet, the hijackers apparently set off an explosive device, and a shoot-out ensued. Realizing that the attempt had failed, two of the Ovechkin sons shot and killed their mother, then turned their weapons...
...Ovechkin at one time had been honored as a Hero Mother of the Soviet Union, the newspaper said. The decoration is given Soviet women who have many children...
Izvestia quoted witnesses as saying one hijacker died in the bomb blast, two others committed suicide, and Mrs. Ovechkin had been shot dead by some of her fellow hijackers...