Man 'drops' from plane after explosion
A man was killed in an explosion on an Airbus A321 that made a hole in the fuselage and forced the plane to return to the Somali capital of Mogadishu to make an emergency landing, officials said on Wednesday.
There was no immediate explanation of the explosion from the airline or Somali government officials.
“Daallo airline was enroute to Djibouti but it landed shortly after it took off. A fire exploded and two passengers were slightly wounded,” Mohamed Hussein, an agent for Daallo Airlines, the operator of the flight, told Reuters.
Aviation website www.airlive.net said the explosion occurred on flight D3159, an Airbus A321, adding witnesses heard a loud bang.
Daallo flies to several destinations in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, its website showed.
Eyewitnesses claimed that an old man was sucked out of the hole in the blast and plummeted to his doom.
Somalia’s civil aviation director, Abdiwahid Omar, told the state radio website that a person was missing after the Daallo Airlines plane landed on Tuesday and the body had been found.
“The investigation goes on,” Omar said, without mentioning any explosion or what had forced the plane to return except to say there was a “sudden defect” reported by the captain.
A police officer at Mogadishu airport said, “The dead body of the passenger is being transported to Mogadishu.”
The officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters that the man was about 55 years old.
“He dropped when the explosion occurred in the plane,” he said.
Sources: Reuters, Mail Online, Twitter
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