A commercial Somali airline aircraft suffered a freak mid-air accident after an explosion blew a hole in its fuselage and a person was sucked out of the plane on 2 February. A report now indicates that the person sucked out was actually a suicide bomber.
The plane that took off from Somali capital Mogadishu was an Airbus 321. Shortly after the blast, the Djibouti-bound plane performed an emergency landing back in Mogadishu.
In the preliminary investigation, investigators believe that the bomber was on a wheelchair when he boarded the plane and he used the wheelchair as a way to smuggle the bomb in. A trace of bomb residue was also found on the plane after it landed, lending weight to the possibility of a bomb on board.
There’s a residue, they’re saying, of explosives. There’s a trace. But that cannot really make 100 percent that it’s a bomb.Mohammed Ibrahim Yassin, CEO, Daallo Airlines
The pilot of the plane also suspected that the blast might have been due to a bomb on board.
The explosion was a bomb blast but officials said they had not determined the cause. Two people on board suffered minor injuries.Pilot, Daallo Airlines
Somalia’s government confirmed on Thursday that a passenger who had been missing since the explosion had died. It identified him as Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, but gave no details about how he died.
Local police have previously said residents of Balad, a town 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) north of Mogadishu, found the body of a man who might have been blown out of the airline in the blast.
The Airbus A321 was carrying 74 passengers when the explosion struck. Some reports suspect that terror group Al-Shabaab was behind this attack.
(With AP inputs.)
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