RIYADH, 10 September 2005 — Passengers of the Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight SV 781, on which a bomb hoax sparked a stampede at the Colombo International Airport on Thursday, arrived here in a special Saudia aircraft yesterday morning at 8.20 in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, Colombo launched a full-scale investigation on the bomb hoax which triggered an emergency evacuation from the Riyadh/Jeddah bound flight Thursday afternoon. The grounded aircraft also left Colombo at 8 p.m. yesterday without passengers on board after airport authorities issued a clearance certificate for its takeoff.

“We are trying to trace the call which initially came to the airport telephone operator and then connected to the control tower,” airport chief Tiran Alles said. “An investigation is under way.”

Nineteen passengers who were seriously injured in the scramble to exit the Boeing 747 jetliner through emergency chutes were still in hospital yesterday, a day after the incident. A total of 62 out of the 430 passengers and 22 crew members were injured and most of them had minor bruises. Alles said they were probing the incident thoroughly. “We have had similar hoaxes in the past,” Alles said. “This is serious because a life has been lost and many more people were injured.”

The airline authorities have identified the dead woman as Fatima Aboosalih, 28, from Bibile, 225 km from Colombo. She was coming for employment as a maid to a household in Jeddah.

Among the arriving passengers, a Sri Lankan housewife who was coming with four children including a 1 1/2-year-old infant had lost her valuables worth SR200,000 which she claims she had put in her handbag.

“When the passengers were asked to evacuate, I carried baby Fakhira immediately and asked my children to get out of the plane as quickly as possible leaving the handbag,” Farhana Faroon told Arab News.

She added: “It had all my jewelry including a diamond set and Rs. 150,000 cash which I collected from the tenant of my house rented in Colombo.” Although she had minor bruises to her elbow, she opted to stay in the hotel without going to the hospital for medical treatment because she did not want to leave her children alone in the hotel.

“The airline officials gave all the handbags except mine to the respective passengers when we came to the airport on the following day for the Riyadh flight,” Farhana said. Accompanying Farhana were her children Fakhira, Fariha, Fadiya and Famidha. Her husband works as an accountant at a premier food establishment in Riyadh.

At the Riyadh airport, Farhana got only three of her five checked in bags and she was asked by the airport authorities to collect the rest of the luggage today presuming that the bags had been tagged to Jeddah, the final destination of the flight.

A banker who wished to remain anonymous said that the airline officials were cooperative in the emergency situation. “We were asked to remove our shoes and leave all belongings before we ventured to slide through the chutes,” he said, adding that he got even his shoes back when he came to the airport again to board the rescheduled flight. “I got all my accompanied bags, thanks to Saudia,” he said.

Mohammed Najeeb and Mohammed Izmi who work for King Faisal School in Riyadh said they did not get their bags and were asked to come the following day to collect them.

A senior official from the Saudi Arabian Airlines in Colombo told Arab News that all the passengers had identified their bags at the Colombo airport before loading. “There is no chance of bags getting lost, perhaps some could have been dispatched to Jeddah in an emergency situation of this nature. In such a case, they will be diverted to Riyadh again,” he added. He confirmed that Farhana had lodged a formal complaint in Colombo and had been assured that the airline would do its best to look into the matter.

Saudi ambassador in Colombo, Mohamed Mahmud Al-Ali was also on the flight but he escaped injury. He was on his way to attend the funeral of his father and got a SriLankan flight later though he was able to take only his hand luggage. “It was a long journey. I took a flight to Abu Dhabi and then to Madinah and finally I reached Tabuk in time for the funeral,” Al-Ali told Arab News.