Somali officials start investigating blast on board plane

Back on the ground, the surviving passengers calmly collected their belongings and filed off the plane. A child wearing an oxygen mask sat quietly, partially covered by a blanket. Multiple oxygen masks are shown dangling from the carry on compartments above where seats once sat by the hold in the side of the Somalia plane.

A COMMERCIAL airliner made an emergency landing at Mogadishu’s global airport late on Tuesday after passengers heard a loud bang and a fire broke out on board, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage, officials and witnesses said.

While it’s still unclear what caused the explosion that tore a large hole in the plane’s fuselage, unconfirmed reports suggest that it may have been a bomb.

Officials say they have found no evidence of a criminal act but an investigation involving foreign technical experts is under way.

A Dijibouti-based Daallo Airlines Airbus A321-100, en route from Mogadishu to Djibouti, experienced an onboard explosion after 15 minutes after takeoff, and returned to Mogadishu airport.

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It’s believed at least one passenger, a man in his 60s, died after he was sucked out of the six-foot-by-three-foot hole.

Two people were “slightly” hurt, and local media report a “severely burned” body fell from a passing jet yesterday, which neither Daallo or Somali officials have confirmed.

It said: “Pilots managed to land the aircraft back (in) Mogadishu Airport safely and without any further incident”.

John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board and an aviation security expert, said: “We don’t know a lot, but certainly it looks like a device”.

“I was sleeping when the incident was happening, but running people woke me up amid fear and shock”.

One man was killed by the blast on Tuesday on the Daallo Airlines plane, officials said.

The pilot of a plane damaged in an explosion over Somalia said Wednesday that he and others were told the blast was caused by an explosive device. “All passengers, except one, disembarked safely”, it said, adding there was an investigation into “the cause of one missing passenger”.

The pilot said he thought it was a bomb.

The ambassador told the AP he saw a “chunk of small area of the plane missing, and that air was floating in and out”.

Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation Ali Ahmed Jama “Jangali” told VOA Somali that the body of the person, found near the town of Bal’ad, is in the hands of the investigators.

Daallo flies to several destinations in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, its website showed.