The aircraft is an Airbus 321 belonging to Daallo Airlines, the national airline of Somalia, according to an ABC News report. Witnesses say the apparent explosion opened a hole in the plane’s fuselage that reached from the ceiling to the floor. Miraculously, the plane was able to land safely and only two passengers were injured in the blast. The aircraft held 74 passengers and crew and a Somali aviation official said that the two passengers only suffered slight injuries in the incident, according to WTSP Channel 10 Action News.
“The aircraft landed safely and all our passengers were evacuated safely,” the statement said. “A thorough investigation is being conducted by Somalia Civil Aviation Authority,” the airline said on its Facebook page. Prior to the plane landing, the airline posted a notification saying the plane “experienced an incident shortly after takeoff” from the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia.
At press time the airline had not provided any other details regarding injuries and hadn’t said that an explosion is thought to have made the hole in the side of the aircraft. Passengers aboard the plane reported hearing “a loud bang and then saw smoke,” according to the ABC report. Oxygen masks deployed as the cabin quickly depressurized and some of the 74 passengers were forced to the back of the jetliner as it began a steep descent to an altitude that would allow passengers to breathe without the temporary masks.
After viewing pictures of the damaged aircraft, passengers and experts weighed in on probable causes. “I don’t know if it was a bomb or an electric shock — but we heard a bang inside the plane,” said passenger Mohamed Ali, according to reports.
“The thing that’s most interesting to me is that if you look at the outside of the airplane, some force from within the airplane pushed the sides of the aircraft open. You can see how it’s peeled back and you can actually see the streaking from soot down the back side, which would suggest quite definitively that this was a bomb of some kind, probably something about a hand-grenade size that would have made this hole in the side of the airplane,” said ABC News aviation consultant ret. Col. Steve Ganyard.
The harrowing descent to an airport in Mogadishu, Somalia resulted in a safe landing, leaving the aircraft intact outside of the damage caused by the explosion that left the large, soot streaked hole in the side of the plane.
A recent spate of crashes and disappearances of passenger jets linked to potential terror attacks have passengers on edge in 2016. In March of 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China. Later that same year another Malaysian flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed after being shot down over the Russian border with Ukraine and crashed near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board. More recently, a Russian Metrojet airliner blew up and crashed over Egypt’s Sinai desert killing all aboard. The Kremlin has said that the plane was destroyed by a terrorist act.
