A senior Belarus transport official said Monday that the country had received a bomb threat claiming to be from Hamas ahead of the diversion of a Ryanair passenger flight carrying a dissident.
Artem Sikorsky, the head of the aviation department at the transport and communications ministry, read out a letter to journalists that said: "We, the soldiers of Hamas, demand that Israel cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. We demand that the European Union renounces its support for Israel in this war... A bomb is planted on this flight. If you do not fulfil our demands, the bomb will explode over Vilnius on May 23.