An explosion and fire blew a gaping hole in a commercial airliner forcing it to make an emergency landing at Mogadishu’s international airport, officials and witnesses said.
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.
Two people were slightly injured as 74 passengers and crew of the plane were evacuated after the plane made a safe landing on Tuesday, Somali aviation official Ali Mohamoud said. It was not certain if all the passengers were accounted for.
However, there were unverified reports that a person fell out of the hole caused by the explosion. 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.
The flight, operated by Daallo Airlines and headed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, was forced to land minutes after taking off from the Mogadishu airport.
“I think it was a bomb,” said the pilot, Vladimir Vodopivec, who was quoted by Belgrade daily Blic. “Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport. 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 UN 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 realised “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.
“We don’t know a lot, but certainly it looks like a device,” said John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board and aviation safety expert.
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 pressurisation 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, said Goglia. A pressurisation blowout wouldn’t create soot, but a bomb would, he said.
Also, information about the event posted online indicate it took place during the takeoff phase of flight before the plane reached 30,000 feet, where there is maximum pressurisation, Goglia said. That makes the case for a pressurisation blowout even less likely, he said.
Another passenger, Mohamed Ali, told the Associated Press 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.
Although the Somali aviation official said that there were only two injuries, there were unverified reports that a person fell out of the hole.
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-Shabaab, which is responsible for many deadly attacks across the nation.
