The hijacking of an Afghan airliner at London's Stansted airport ended peacefully on early Thursday with the safe release of all the remaining hostages.

Just before 6:00 am GMT, all the remaining passengers walked off the plane in a calm, orderly manner, just like the first group of 85 people who were allowed to leave the plane at around 3:17 am.

"We believe the plane is empty," a police spokesman told a press conference.

"We need to ensure these people are in a good state of health, get them to a place of safety, identify hostages and hostage takers," he said.

The gunmen, who hijacked the Ariana Boeing 727 plane shortly after it took off from Kabul on Sunday morning on a domestic flight to Mazar-i-Sharif, were thought to have been the last to leave the jet before being arrested.

The plane made stops at Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, the northern Kazakh town of Aktyubinsk and Moscow before landing at Stansted shortly after 2 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Monday.