SOMALIA: Dead Passenger Identified In Somali Jetliner Bomb

The pilot Captain Vlatko Vodopivec

A dead passenger has been identified and six people have been arrested in relation to an explosion inside a jetliner that blew a gaping hole in the plane and forced an emergency landing last Tuesday, according to officials.

A man’s body was found in the town of Balad, 30 kilometres (about 18 miles) north of Mogadishu, according to police who said he might have been blown from the plane.

Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle is suspected to have been a suicide bomber, a senior Somali civil aviation official, who insisted on anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. Six people have been arrested in connection with the blast after examinations of CCTV images in the airport, a senior Somali intelligence official said.

CCTV footage released by the Somali National Intelligence Agency (NISA) appears to show two airport workers inside the terminal handing the suicide bomber a laptop stuffed with explosives, according to the government spokesman.

The blast forced the Daallo Airlines plane to make an emergency landing in Somalia’s capital. The Serb pilot who landed the jetliner said he never doubted that it was caused by a bomb and described the security around the airplane at Mogadishu Airport as “zero.”

A suicide bomber was suspected to have set off the explosive inside the plane, Somali officials said Saturday. The blast sucked a male passenger out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing Tuesday in Somalia’s capital, they said.

The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane, with 75 passengers on board, took off from the airport and was at 11,000 feet (3,500 metres) ascending toward 31,000 feet.

“When we went past 10,000 feet, we switched off the fasten belts sign and the cabin crew started serving passengers,” pilot captain Vlatko Vodopivec said. “When we climbed past 11,000 feet, it exploded. At first, I thought it was a window breaking. However, we soon sensed the smell of the explosives when smoke came rushing into the cockpit.”

“All lasted very shortly,” he said. “We immediately demanded an emergency return to the airport because that was the only solution. With a heavy heart, because there the security is minimal and we had to remain there for a couple of days afterword.”

If the explosion happened at a higher altitude, the hole in the fuselage might have caused more severe structural damage, he said.

“If we were higher, the whole plane could have disintegrated after the explosion,” Vodopivec said.

Because the plane was at a lower altitude, he was able to land safely, he said. “The plane acted normally and we virtually returned normally. Engines and hydraulics worked normally.”

The pilot blamed the incident on the lack of security around the plane at Mogadishu Airport, describing the facility as chaotic.

“The security is zero. When we park there, some 20 to 30 people come to the tarmac,” said Vodopivec, a veteran pilot who has made numerous flights to the airport. “No one has a badge or those yellow vests. They enter and leave the plane, and no one knows who is who. They can put anything inside when passengers leave the aircraft.”

Somalia’s government has said it will tighten security at the airport to prevent other threats.

Somalia faces an insurgency from the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has carried out deadly attacks in Somalia and neighbouring countries.

Daallo Airlines, which is based in Dubai, has temporarily suspended its operations in Somalia’s capital following the incident but hopes to restart them soon, said Mohammed Ibrahim Yassin, the airline’s chief executive.

Vodopivec also highlighted additional security concerns in the Somali capital, including some planes that are struck by gunfire on approach to the airport.

“You can land at the airport only from the seaside,” he said. “On the other side of the runway is the city. Bigger planes don’t land over the city because of security concerns. Some planes landed with bullet holes in their fuselage.”

SOMALIA: Wheelchair Man Was Likely Suicide Bomber On Daallo Flight

A suicide bomber strapped into a wheelchair may have been behind the mid-flight explosion on board the Daallo Airlines plane, officials said.

The alleged bomber then detonated the bomb soon after takeoff, which blew a hole in the Airbus A321’s fuselage but couldn’t not down it.

The bomber, engulfed in flames, was believed to have been sucked out of plane. Witnesses on the ground said they saw a body fall to the ground after the blast Wednesday. The body was recovered near the town of Balad, about 20 miles from Mogadishu.

The suspected terrorist, believed to be part of the Somalia-based Islamic group known as Al-Shabaab, may have faked a disability to con his way through security checks at Mogadishu airport.

U.S. government sources said on Wednesday that initial forensic testing had detected possible traces of the explosive TNT on the aircraft. But one official cautioned that such tests have a high false-positive rate, and further tests are underway.

Daallo Airlines, which did not refer to a blast, said on its website that the “incident” that caused a hole in the fuselage happened 15 minutes into the flight.

Survivor Hassan Mohamed Nur said “I saw the passenger, a man in his early 60s, get sucked out of the plane. There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it.

“One minute he was sat in his seat, the next he was gone. He’d been sucked out of the plane.

“People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.”

SOMALIA: Daallo Airlines Plane Makes Emergency Landing At Mogadishu After Explosion In Mid-flight

In what is likely a flier’s worst nightmare, a passenger flight made an emergency landing at Mogadishu airport on Tuesday after an explosion soon after taking off from the Somali capital.

The commuter jet owned by the Daallo airlines was Djibouti-bound when a loud bang was heard followed by flames that lit up one side of the plane, sources say.

Images taken after the plane landed in the Aden Abdulle International airport shows a massive damage on the right side of the plane close to the engine.

According to airport officials, all the people on board, including passengers and plane’s crew, remained safe in the incident. But three of the passengers sustained injuries.

Reports from Mogadishu say that officials from the National Intelligence and Security Agency have launched an investigation on the cause of the explosion.

Privately-owned Daallo airlines is one of the small east African operators linking the Horn of Africa nation to neighbouring countries since the overthrow of the Central government in 1991.

Authorities are trying to figure out the reason for an explosion and fire that blew a gaping hole into the side of a Somali jetliner Tuesday, forcing an emergency landing at the airport on Mogadishu.

The plane made an emergency landing at Aden Abdulle Airport in Somalia's capital, with a hole that appeared shortly after the plane took off.

The Daalo Airlines flight had 74 people on board as it headed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

Two passengers were hurt in the incident, according to various news reports, a loud bang was heard followed by flames.

The Plane was immediately surrounded by security officials as investigations have been launched

Locals have said they saw a severely burned body fall from a passenger jet.

"It was not an explosion but a fuselage failure at 10,000 feet."

The airline, based in Dubai, did not respond to an email sent to its corporate office.

The pilot said he thinks it was a bomb. An aviation expert who looked at photographs of the hole in the fuselage said the damage was consistent with an explosive device.

"Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport," said pilot Vladimir Vodopivec, who was quoted by Belgrade daily Blic. "Something like this has never happened in my flight career. We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank god it ended well," the 64-year-old pilot said.

Awale Kullane, Somalia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, who was on board the flight, said on Facebook that he "heard a loud noise and couldn't see anything but smoke for a few seconds." When visibility returned they realized "quite a chunk" of the plane was missing, he wrote.

Kullane, who was going to Djibouti to attend a conference for diplomats, also posted a video showing some passengers putting on oxygen masks inside the plane. The post was later removed from his Facebook page.

There are only two things that could have caused a hole in the plane that looks like the one in photos circulated online — a bomb or a pressurization blowout caused by a flaw or fatigue in the plane's skin, said Goglia.

The photos appear to show black soot around the aircraft skin that is peeled back, Goglia said. A pressurization blowout wouldn't create soot, but a bomb would, he said.

Another passenger, Mohamed Ali, said that he and others heard a bang before flames opened a gaping hole in the plane's side.

"I don't know if it was a bomb or an electric shock, but we heard a bang inside the plane," he said, adding he could not confirm reports that passengers had fallen from the plane.

Mohamed Hassan, a police officer in nearby Balad town, said residents had found the dead body of an old man who might have fallen from a plane. Balad is an agricultural town about 18 miles north of Mogadishu.

Somalia faces an insurgency perpetrated by the Somali Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which is responsible for many deadly attacks across the nation.