grizzled:
The aircraft had departed for Cologne much earlier than you are surmising. Its difficulties began whilst in Bahrain's airspace and they elected to return to DXB. On their first approach things got very bad very quickly and (without too much detail) they were unable to see their instruments or the airport.
That would appear so to me. If they perceived a critical situation earlier, you'd think they would have headed directly to the desert - or the Gulf.