Cairo merely informed Cypriot president Kyprianou that "people are on the way to help rescue the hostages" and did not reveal who was on board nor what their intentions were.

Upon landing in Cyprus, the Egyptian force immediately launched an all-out 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) 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.

Following the assault, it emerged that the surrender of the two hostage-takers had already been secured at the time of the failed Egyptian attack, and the two men were taken prisoner by the Cypriots and later extradited to Egypt, where they received death sentences, later commuted to life sentences.The aftermath of the failed night-time incident and the need of a professional counter-terrorism unit in Egypt resulted in the creation of Unit 777.

[3] The context was the deterioration of relations between Egypt and Libya after the Yom Kippur War due to Libyan opposition to Sadat's peace policy.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense quickly flew to Luxor International Airport where they started a secret meeting in the airport's tower, while Major General Abdul Hafiz Al-Bagori, Governor of Qena started negotiations with the three terrorists in order to gain time.

An Egypt Air Boeing 737 (EgyptAir Flight 648) had landed in Luqa Airport under the control of Abu Nidal faction terrorists, purportedly as retaliation for Egypt's failure to protect the terrorists that had hijacked the MS Achille Lauro earlier that year.

[6] Using the same hole, the operators gained entry to the plane but in the confusion opened fire indiscriminately and killed and injured more passengers.

In the ensuing chaos, passengers that managed to flee the plane were then gunned down by snipers in positions around the airport who mistook them for terrorists attempting to escape.