Tuesday, 9 February 2016

Another bomb is detonated aboard an international flight


Full article on economist.com

The extraordinary events that unfolded over the skies of Somalia on February 2nd have now become clearer. About 15 minutes after Daallo Airlines Flight 159 departed from Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, an explosive device carried by Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh, one of the passengers, blew a gaping hole just above the right wing of the plane (a spot identified in al-Qaeda literature as being the most effective place to detonate a bomb). Mr Borleh, who is suspected of being a suicide bomber, was sucked out of the aircraft and fell to his death. Everyone else survived. Had the incident occurred minutes later, once the plane reached cruising altitude, the resultant explosive decompression would almost certainly have killed all aboard. To say that the 73 innocent passengers on Flight 159 had a lucky escape is an understatement...