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OFFICIALS AT SOMALIA’S civil aviation authority said they have found no evidence so far of a criminal act in an explosion on an airliner that took off from Mogadishu’s airport and returned for an emergency landing.
Sky News is reporting that a man was sucked out of the plane after the blast.
Investigators moved the plane from the runway to a private hangar. Foreign technical experts were involved in the inquiry, Ali Mohamoud, an aviation official at the airport, said.
The pilot said he thought the blast was caused by a bomb.
Two passengers on board the flight – which was headed to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa – said they heard a loud bang, suggesting an explosion that left a hole in the passenger cabin.
Awale Kullane, Somalia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, was on board the flight. He said on Facebook that he “heard a loud noise and couldn’t see anything but smoke for a few seconds.” When visibility returned they realised “quite a chunk” of the plane was missing, he wrote.
Harun Maruf, a journalist with Voice of America, tweeted that residents in Bal’ad have found a man’s body.
Mohamed Hassan, a police officer in Bal’ad, an agricultural town 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) north of Mogadishu, confirmed that the dead body of an elderly man who might have fallen from a plane was found.
The plane was headed to Djibouti when the blast happened minutes after takeoff. An official investigation is underway and a preliminary report will be issued later this week, officials said.
Daallo Airlines said in a brief statement posted on its Facebook page that the Airbus A321 plane was operated by Hermes Airlines. It said the plane “experienced an incident shortly after take-off”.
“The Aircraft landed safely and all of our passengers were evacuated safely. A thorough investigation is being conducted by Somalia Civil Aviation Authority,” the Daallo statement said.
Officials at the carrier’s Dubai office had no immediate further comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
‘I think it was a bomb’
Hermes Airlines is based in Athens, Greece. Its main business is providing planes on a “wet lease” basis, meaning it leases insured planes staffed and serviced by its crew to other carriers. Its fleet includes four A321s and one Boeing 737, according to its website.
“I think it was a bomb,” the Serbian pilot, Vladimir Vodopivec, told Belgrade daily Blic.
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.
- Additional reporting by Órla Ryan
Shameful waste of tax payers money this government has to go
Deplorable. No wonder the country’s policies are backwards
@GooseSkipGoose: Asylum doesn’t work, you suppose to seek asylum in the first safe country you reach, However most transit through EU countries to get here.
@The long walk home☘️: Bertie Ahern brought that in in the Dublin Treaty, people didn’t realise then how things would work out. It’s definitely a no go under the current climate for the Country’s around the Mediterranean that’s why it’s happening.
country is a joke look after your own
@Mark Campbell: so we shouldn’t accept any asylum seekers? Any immigrants of any kind?
@GrahamMManning: and of course require our own to return from all over the world to settle back here in Ireland where we can take good care of them.
@Gavin Conran: perhaps even their descendants?
State needs to sort itself out, put more resources to dealing with these cases. Provide some timely interventions to either send these people home or to provide them with asylum here and help integrate them. Throwing money away in this, in a week, how much could be saved on dealing with cases! Or maybe I should buy a guest house and get pally with Chazza and his pals in the dept!
@ThatLJD: give em a pps number and a job let them live like everyone else and pay their way
@Eamonn Roche: Great but where will they live?
@Eamonn Roche: So do away with our visa system entirely and allow anyone who wants to come to Ireland to do so as long as they work? The only legal basis for asylum seekers to be in Ireland is for the determination of their claim for asylum. The top two claimants are two non-E.U. European states, Albania and Georgia. They have a 99% and 97% rejection rate respectively. The next two claimants are Zimbabwe and Nigeria with an 82% and 94% rejection rates. They should all be fast tracked.
The DP system is the best system to accommodate asylum seekers providing the initial claims are processed within a six to nine month time scale. It should be much faster than that for the top four claimant counties. The issues are decision times, asylum shopping and economic migrants making bogus claims.
So wrong in so many ways
Ya while our own are dying on the streets daily young homeless family’s kids aswell living in tents if there lucky while Leo & co give themselves a pay rise. charity stops at home im afraid this country is F#ked and no im not racist snowflakes !!
@United Ireland: ignoring the spelling and sentence structure. No our own aren’t “dying on the streets daily”, no one is lucky to live in a tent, if charity stopped at home no one would help the people you’re describing, in some areas fair nuff we are f’ed and if you have to deny being something guess what you might be?
@GrahamMManning: Im denying that Im blind, does that mean I might be blind? See how your argument about racism falls short? I never understood that logic. Denying doesnt equate to being.
@Dom: it means you might be. Doesn’t mean you are. It’d be an odd thing to bring up if you weren’t though, wouldn’t it?
@GrahamMManning: I suppose that argument can be applied to anything. Anything said out of context can be odd. It would certainly be unnatural for me to bring it up but in this case, it fits the context. Just like United Ireland’s comment fits the context. Its also relevant and justified given how people can get so quickly bent out of shape. Anyway, just my input, it all comes down to maybes and woulds and coulds.
@Dom: yup fair nuff. Does seem to be mentioned more often than not by posters whose comments could be interpreted as racist and rarely by those whose comments couldn’t?
We really need to deport the fraudsters, every bogus asylum seeker is taking the place of a genuine one.
The few genuine asylum seekers shoulsd be allowed to
We really need to deport the fraudsters, every bogus asylum seeker is taking the place of a genuine one.
€462,046 does not average out at 18 million, your 6million short on your maths. €24,026,392 a year
@Ali Ní Dhomhnaill: till September sorry too tired
@Ali Ní Dhomhnaill: lol I’d be so embarrassed omg
How many times would that get Joyce from Zurich to Dublin and back.
@Keelan O’neill: hmmm…sure he wants to come back?
“Look after our own” is very thinly veiled racism. Look closely and you will see that most decent people don’t subscribe to such apathy.
@Freezepeach: Ur profile pic is racism im calling the guard’s
@United Ireland: need help dialing the number cos you sure do when typing?
@GrahamMManning: hamMmannning go hug a tree for urself or maybe wash Ur hair & get a job living on handouts all Ur live aswell I bet
@United Ireland: such cutting insults, how will my fragile ego not crumble? Bald as a cue ball and gainfully employee as a teacher. What do u do kid?
@GrahamMManning: employed.
@United Ireland: If you change the word more to no then that’s racism.
@GrahamMManning: yawn, what a predictable narrow minded comment
@GooseSkipGoose: care to articulate how, maybe even offer some substantive input yourself?
Scammers !
@ken gray: all of em yeah?
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