Bomb Suspected in Deadly Explosion on Somali Jet
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — American officials said Wednesday that an explosion on a Somali jetliner that punched a three-foot hole through its fuselage in midair and killed one passenger was most likely caused by a bomb.

Their preliminary assessment heightened fears that the Shabab militant group in Somalia, suspected in the explosion, had figured out a way to plant the bomb in the plane.

The explosion on Tuesday rocked the Daallo Airlines flight, an Airbus A321, shortly after it took off from Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, blasting a hole above the plane’s right wing. Two passengers were seriously injured, and another was apparently sucked out of the plane. It was unclear whether he was killed by the blast or the plunge to the ground.

Somali officials said Wednesday that they had recovered the body of an older man who had fallen from the sky several miles outside Mogadishu.

American officials were initially concerned that the explosion might have been caused by a surface-to-air missile. After the stricken plane circled back to Mogadishu, American military advisers who are working in Somalia with African Union peacekeepers rushed to investigate, American officials said. They quickly determined from the way the metal was punched out that the explosion had been caused by something inside the aircraft.

Somali news reports indicated that there had been around 70 passengers aboard. Daallo Airlines said in a statement that the plane had been heading to neighboring Djibouti and that the explosion had happened about 15 minutes after takeoff.

The concern now is that the Shabab, who have killed thousands of civilians over the years in their quest to turn Somalia into a puritanical Islamic state, may be practicing more sophisticated killing tactics, breaching the airport’s security and placing a timed explosive device in the aircraft.

“The Shabab have upped their game,” said one former American military official who works in Somalia. “And we’re very lucky that device didn’t go off when the plane was higher, or it could have brought the whole plane down.”

The Shabab seem to be making a comeback after years of defeats at the hands of an African Union peacekeeping force. They are now retaking towns in southern Somalia and building a formidable arsenal of armored personnel carriers, artillery and even American-made Humvees, all stolen from defeated peacekeepers. Last month, Shabab fighters ambushed a Kenyan forward operating base, killing as many as 100 Kenyan soldiers, and possibly more: It was the worst defeat the Kenyan military had ever suffered.

The Shabab also recently slaughtered civilians who were dining at a beachside restaurant in Mogadishu.

Antiterrorism experts say that if a bomb is confirmed as the cause of the plane explosion, it may also have been planted by members of the Islamic State’s new branches in Somalia.

In recent months, dozens of fighters have defected from the Shabab to the Islamic State, which has a history of bringing down aircraft. The Islamic State is widely believed to have been behind the bomb that felled a Russian jetliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in October, killing 224 people.

So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the explosion aboard the Daallo flight.

One passenger, Awale Ali Kulane, a Somali diplomat, said that all of a sudden there was a loud bang, the cabin filled with black smoke and the plane lurched down.

“Some of the people were reading the Quran, and everybody on board was worried,” he said.

The American government has a large intelligence and law enforcement presence in Kenya that closely watches Somalia. On Wednesday, an American official said, the United States government asked the Somali government for permission to send F.B.I. agents from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, to Mogadishu to assist in the investigation of the plane explosion.

So far, the official said, the Somali government has not responded.

“There’s a lot of guys around here who would love to get their hands on this,” said the American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss pending investigations. “Right now, we’re just waiting.”

索馬利亞客機空中炸出大洞 安全迫降

索馬利亞官員與目擊者表示，一架客機2日深夜空中爆炸、起火，機身炸出大洞，緊急迫降索馬利亞首都摩加迪休國際機場。

機上74人 2人受傷

民航官員表示，飛機安全落地，機上74人疏散時，其中二人受到輕傷。

這架達洛航空（Daalo Airlines）班機原訂飛往吉布地，從摩加迪休起飛後幾分鐘就被迫返航。

專家：可能被放炸彈

塞爾維亞籍機師表示，他認為是炸彈引起爆炸。看過照片的航空專家表示，機身破洞和爆裂物的破壞結果相符。

英國「鏡報」報導，索馬利亞常駐聯合國副代表庫藍上傳當時拍攝的影片，當中可看到乘客冷靜地戴上氧氣罩，強風則從機身破洞不斷灌進艙內。

他在臉書貼文說：「聽到一聲巨響後，有幾秒鐘除了煙霧什麼都看不見，恢復能見度後，才知道有一大塊機體不見了。」這段文字後來被刪除。

初步資料顯示，爆炸發生在飛機上升到三萬英尺（9144公尺）之前的爬升階段。

傳1人被吸出機外

美聯社報導，未證實的報導指出，有一人被吸出飛機外。摩加迪休北方30公里城鎮巴拉德居民發現一具老翁屍體，疑為從客機掉下來的死者。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/world/africa/somalia-jetliner-explosion.html

Video：A Somali diplomat on board describes what happened when an explosion that is being investigated as a terror attack ripped through a plane just minutes after takeoff, forcing it to land in Mogadishu.
http://nyti.ms/23JuIOG

2016-02-03．聯合晚報．A8．國際焦點．國際新聞組