An unidentified man was sucked out of a passenger jet at 14,000 feet after a suspected bomb blasted a hole through the side of the fuselage just five minutes after the Airbus A321 took off from Mogadishu.
Eyewitnesses claim the badly burned body of an elderly man fell to the earth about 15 miles away from the airport at the time of the blast.
AIrline officials claim two people were injured by the blast which punched a hole in the aluminum fuselage about six foot by three foot in size.
The aircraft’s pilot Vladimir Vodopivec, 64, from Serbia said: ‘I think it was a bomb. 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.’
A source told CNN that initial tests have shown explosive residue indicating the aircraft may have been the victim of a suspected terrorist attack.
The explosion happened as the aircraft passed between 12,000 and 14,000, before it reached its cruising altitude.
Somali aviation official Ali Mohamoud said the aircraft, operated by Daallo Airlines was headed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, was forced to land minutes after taking off from the Mogadishu airport
Awale Kullane, Somalia’s alternate ambassador to the U.N. 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’.
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