Dubai (AFP) - An Indian pilot attacked by his co-pilot aboard a flight from the UAE to Israel said Friday that he “could not let all those people die”, in his first public remarks after he helped stop the plane from crashing.

His actions on Wednesday helped avert disaster when he managed to open the cockpit door despite his injuries, allowing passengers and crew to take control of the plane and make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

United Arab Emirates presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said on Friday that the incident aboard a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was a “terrorist act” after the co-pilot was returned to the country.

The mostly Israeli passengers on the flight have been flown back to Israel on a replacement plane.

Flydubai captain Smit Machchhar told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a call from his hospital bed that he knew he had to act quickly, saying that opening the cockpit door was a “last push” to get help.

“I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed. At that time, I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the door was right there,” he said.

“I was being hit even then, but I just opened the door and everyone came in.”

Machchhar, who has 17 years of aviation experience, including 11 as a captain, described the moment he realised the plane was going down while he was lying injured.

He told Modi that during the ordeal, he had recited a Hindu devotional prayer dedicated to the deity Hanuman.

“I know God himself saved me,” he said.

The pilot said years of aviation experience allowed him to understand what was happening even while he was wounded.

The UAE’s general civil aviation authority on Friday commended Machchhar, the flight crew and passengers who responded to the attack.

“Their decisive and swift intervention, and the sense of responsibility behind it, helped contain the situation and prevented more serious consequences, reflecting a level of readiness, cooperation and shared responsibility in facing exceptional emergencies,” it said in a statement published by official UAE news agency WAM.

- ‘Kill me, kill me’ -

The circumstances of the confrontation are under investigation, but the co-pilot allegedly attacked Machchhar, leaving him wounded and triggering a struggle for control of the aircraft.

Passengers described rushing the cockpit and a fight for control after the plane plummeted – losing around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute, according to the Flightradar24 website.

Modi said Machchhar’s actions helped save many lives and averted “a great tragedy”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier also credited Machchhar and the passengers with averting a catastrophe.

US President Donald Trump warned on Thursday that if Iran was found to be linked to the attack the country would be “hit very hard”.

Netanyahu has said the suspect had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination”.

“The attacker, he calls out to the aircrew, ‘Kill me, kill me’,” Netanyahu told US media, adding it was “clear he was suicidal”.

The Israeli leader identified the co-pilot as an Omani national and said Israel would check how he had been cleared to work on flights to the country.

“We have constraints that say that you can’t have pilots from countries that don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel. Obviously he was able to go through that,” Netanyahu told Fox News.

Flydubai has suspended flights to and from Israel since the attack, leaving some Israelis stranded in the UAE.

The first Israeli flight from the United Arab Emirates after the flydubai attack took off from Dubai for Tel Aviv on Friday, flown by Israeli carrier Arkia, according to Dubai’s international airport, with Israeli media calling it a repatriation flight.

It came after Israel’s flag carrier El Al said it was planning replacement flights to bring Israeli nationals home but was forced to cancel them on Friday, saying Emirati authorities had not given landing permission.

“As soon as approval is received from the authorities, we are prepared to carry out the special flights to Dubai and return the Israelis home as soon as possible,” El Al said in an online notice.

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