Earlier, two assassins had killed prominent Egyptian newspaper editor Yusuf Sibai and then captured as hostages several Arabs who were attending a convention in Nicosia.

The two assassins captured 16 Arab convention delegates as hostages (among them, two PLO representatives and one Egyptian national) and demanded transportation to Larnaca International Airport.

Among the hostages was an aide to PLO leader Yasser Arafat who telephoned Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou and offered the services of a twelve-man squad of Force 17 gunmen.

[4] According to a report in Time magazine, Sadat was aggrieved by the assassination of his personal friend and soon after Arafat's call, begged President Kyprianou to rescue the hostages and extradite the terrorists to Cairo.

[5] Upon landing in Cyprus, the Egyptian force immediately began an assault, dispatching a single Jeep all-terrain vehicle with three men to race ahead of an estimated 58 troops (another report has this figure at 74[6]) moving towards the hijacked aircraft on foot.

At this moment, the two forces engaged each other with heavy gunfire, and the Cypriots opened fire on the Egyptian C-130H aircraft with a 106 mm anti-tank missile, striking it in the nose and killing the three crew on board.

Seven years later, they would be dispatched on a similar mission to Malta to storm a hijacked Egyptian airliner, another botched operation that resulted in the death of dozens of passengers.