AN apparently lovelorn Egyptian man who hijacked a domestic EgyptAir flight and forced it to land in Cyprus is in police custody and all of the passengers have been freed, officials said.

    “The hijacker has just been arrested,” Cypriot government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said yesterday on Twitter, without providing further details.

    A little earlier, local TV footage from the scene in Larnaca Airport showed seven people leaving the aircraft, with one man climbing out of the cockpit window and then sliding off the Airbus A320.

    Meanwhile, Egyptian officials have identified the hijacker as Seifedeen Mustafa.

    There was some confusion earlier about the Egyptian man’s identity and motive, which some reports indicated was part of a dispute with his ex-wife.

    The man, said to be “in love,” seized Flight MS181, which was en route from Alexandria to Cairo. In Larnaca, he asked for the release of female prisoners in Egypt, according to reports.

    Three passengers of unknown nationalities and four crew members — the two pilots, a flight attendant and a security guard — remained on board before the crisis was brought to an end.

    Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the hijacking was “not something that has to do with terrorism” and a Cypriot government official said the man “seems [to be] in love.”

    Asked about reports that the hijacker had demanded to see a Cypriot woman, Anastasiades said: “Always there is a woman.”

    An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official offered his blunt take: “He’s not a terrorist, he’s an idiot.”

    Egyptian Aviation Ministry said the man claimed he had a belt with explosives.

    “He had no gun or anything. We don’t know yet whether his [explosives] belt is real, but for the safety of passengers we are dealing with it as real,” Sherif Fathy, Egypt’s minister of aviation, said earlier, AFP reported.

    A civil aviation official said the man gave negotiators the name of a woman who lives in Cyprus and asked to give her an envelope. It’s unclear what relationship she and the man have.

    Cyprus’s Sigma TV reported that the woman had been brought to the airport from her home village of Oroklini, accompanied by a young child, AFP reported.

    Cyprus state radio earlier reported that the man also was demanding asylum and had asked for a translator.

    Flight MS181 took off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria en route to Cairo with 56 passengers, including 26 foreigners, and a seven-member crew.

    An official with flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 said the plane showed no immediate signs of distress. The flight between Alexandria and Cairo usually takes about 30 minutes.

    A statement from the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry said the passengers also included four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, a French national, an Italian, two Greeks and one Syrian.

    The incident raised more questions about security at Egyptian airports.

    It came after a Russian airliner was downed Oct. 31 over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula minutes after it took off from Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.

    IS claimed to have smuggled a bomb on board the plane.

    Larnaca is no stranger to hostage crises. Several hijacked planes were diverted to the airport in the last few decades.

    (SD-Agencies)