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Larnaca International Airport – Glafcos Clerides[a] (IATA: LCA, ICAO: LCLK) is an international airport located 4 km (2.5 mi) southwest of Larnaca, Cyprus.[3] Larnaca International Airport is Cyprus' main international gateway and the largest of the islands' two commercial airports, the other being Paphos International Airport on the island's southwestern coast.

The airport was given its current name in July 2016, in honour of former President of Cyprus (1993 – 2003) Glafcos Clerides.[4]

Larnaca Airport was hastily developed towards the end of 1974 after the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey on 20 July of the same year,[5] which forced the closure of the Nicosia International Airport. The site on which it was built (near the Larnaca Salt Lake) had been previously used as an airfield[which?] in the 1930s and, subsequently, as a military installation[which?] by British forces. Larnaca International opened on 8 February 1975, with only limited infrastructure facilities and a prefabricated set of buildings comprising separate halls for departures and arrivals. The first airlines to use the new airport were Cyprus Airways, using Viscount 800s leased from British Midland, and Olympic Airways, using NAMC YS-11s. Initially, the runway at Larnaca International was too short for jet aircraft.[citation needed]

On 19 February 1978, Larnaca Airport was the scene of the Egyptian raid on Larnaca International Airport: a 1-hour gun battle between Unit 777, an Egyptian military counter-terrorism force, who had raided Larnaca International, and the Cypriot National Guard.

The crisis had begun the previous day, when Youssef Sebai, editor of a prominent Egyptian newspaper and friend of Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, was assassinated at the Nicosia Hilton hotel by two gunmen as he was preparing to address the Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) conference being held at the hotel. The gunmen, a Jordanian and a Kuwaiti, opposed to the Sadat regime, took 50 hostages among the conference attendees, including two representatives of the PLO who happened to be attending the conference. Non-Arab delegates and women were released shortly. Yasser Arafat, with the Cypriot president's agreement, dispatched an unarmed force of 16 to assist with negotiations and any possible rescue operation.

Through negotiations with the Cypriot government, the two attackers were allowed to board a plane to escape with their 15 remaining hostages, including the two PLO hostages. They forced the plane to approach several countries including Libya and Syria but each time their request to land was refused, so after refueling in Djibouti, the plane was forced to return to Larnaca Airport. Egypt then dispatched its entire antiterrorist squad aboard a C-130 Hercules to deal with the hijacking; however, they did so without the knowledge or consent of the Cypriot government.

On landing in Larnaca, the commandos launched an all-out assault on the DC-8, even as Cypriot negotiators had secured the hostage-takers' surrender. Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou and other senior officials observing the events on site were forced to retreat from the airport control tower after it was hit by bullets. Eventually the Egyptian commandos surrendered to the Cypriot forces. The two hijackers were persuaded by the British pilots to give up. The hostages exited the aircraft unharmed once the shooting was over. The Cypriots counted eight wounded. 15 members of the 74-man Egyptian Unit 777 died. President Kyprianou offered reconciliation and apologies, but maintained that Cyprus could not have allowed the Egyptians to act. Egypt and Cyprus each withdrew their diplomatic missions, and frosty relations between the two countries persisted for some time. The two hijackers were condemned to death by a Cypriot court, but the sentence was commuted by Kyprianou and the hijackers released.[6][7][8][9]

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larnaca_International_Airport