Valletta: All 109 passengers and crew members on board a hijacked Libyan airliner en route to the capital, Tripoli, were released on Friday, hours after two men claiming to be carrying explosives forced the plane to divert to Malta, the island's prime minister said.

The hijackers, who were apparently members of a pro-Guddafi group and seeking asylum in Europe, were taken into custody after surrendering as they left the Airbus A320, according to officials and news reports.

Television pictures showed two men being led from the aircraft in handcuffs. The prime minister of the tiny Mediterranean island, Joseph Muscat, tweeted "hijackers surrendered, searched and taken into custody".

Muscat, who provided a steady stream of updates on Twitter about the situation, had said there were 111 passengers on the plane, including 82 men, 28 women and one infant, a breakdown that included the two hijackers. Afriqiyah officials confirmed that figure, adding that seven crew members had also been on board.

The Maltese prime minister reported that the hijackers first released a group of 25 women and children, followed by a second block of 25 people. 

The hijackers said they represented a new political party, called Al Fateh Al Jadeed, a reference to the 1969 military coup in Libya in which Colonel Muammar Gaddafi came to power.

"We did this to announce and publicise our new party," one of the men said in a telephone interview with a Libyan news outlet.

Video footage from Malta showed a man standing outside the door of the plane waving a green flag, a symbolic nod to Gaddafi's 42-year rule, which ended with his ousting and death in 2011.

Since then, Libya's national flag has been replaced with a red, black and green standard that harks back to an earlier period of monarchical rule.

A senior Afriqiyah Airways official said the hijackers had demanded visas for Europe, suggesting they did not have links to radical militant groups and may instead be intending to seek asylum.

The New York Times