The Boeing 737 owned by Sudanese airline company Sun Air was hijacked on Tuesday shortly after takeoff from the city of Nyala in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur en route to Khartoum, the country's capital. The plane was reported to be carrying 95 passengers.
The passenger aircraft was forced to land at Kufra, an isolated airport in southeast Libya, after running low on fuel.
The hijackers are reported to have identified themselves as belonging to a faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA). They are demanding the plane be refueled and maps to fly to Paris, where the movement leader now lives in exile.
SLA leader, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, however, in a telephone interview with the Al-Jazeera television station denied his group's involvement.
Sudan has urged the Libyan authorities to arrest and extradite the hijackers they call "terrorists."
