“The National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) believes the passenger is the suicide bomber who was blown from the Daallo Airlines jet creating a gaping hole in the fuselage and forcing the plane to make an emergency landing back at the Mogadishu airport”.
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Newly released surveillance footage shows the suspected terrorist being handed a laptop by two airport workers at Mogadishu airport, one of whom is wearing an orange security jacket.
“Some of the people that we have arrested are co-operating”, Somali government spokesman Abdisalam Aato said.
Olad also claims that Daallo Airlines is now implementing new security measures to avoid similar future attacks.
The bomber was sucked out of a Daallo Airlines plane through a one-meter wide hole, when the blast ripped open the pressured cabin in mid-air last Tuesday.
A MAN suspected of detonating a bomb on a Somali passenger plane had initially meant to board a Turkish Airlines flight, the company’s chief said.
NPR’s Gregory Warner tells our Newscast unit that the bomber was originally scheduled to fly on a Turkish Airlines flight. If the aircraft had reached cruising altitude, the explosion would have likely set off another in the fuel tank.
Though preliminary tests showed the bomb contained a military grade of the explosive TNT, the source said, it failed to bring down Daallo Airlines Flight 3159.
Somalia, mired in conflict since civil war broke out in 1991, has few air links outside East Africa.
The bomb blast would have caused more damage if it had occurred at a higher altitude, investigators say. In 2012, Turkish Airlines became the first major worldwide commercial airline to fly out of Somalia in more than two decades.
In a video made public on Sunday by officials, one airport worker takes the laptop and hands it to another employee. The pilot was able to land the plane safely in Mogadishu.
‘There are investigations going on and about 15 people have been arrested so far in connection with the incident, ‘ a Somali security official who asked not to be named told AFP.
“Instead, he joined rerouted passengers on the Dubai-based Daallo Airlines to Djibouti. We have been there for 25 years”, he said.
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Since starvation devastated parts of the Horn of Africa nation in 2011, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has forged close ties with Mogadishu and launched a raft of construction and development projects.
