In a video made public by officials on 7 February, two airport workers are seen handing explosives to a suspected terrorist, who blew up the package on a Daalo Airlines flight from Mogadishu. In the footage, taken from CCTV cameras in the airport, one worker takes the laptop bag and hands it to another employee. That employees then hands it to a man who was killed when the laptop explosion blew a hole in the planes fuselage, sucking the bomber from the plane, said Abdisalam Aato, a spokesman for the Somali Prime Minister.
That man, Abdulluhi Abdisalam Borleh, was the only fatality on the Airbus A321 that took off on 2 January. The explosion took out the airplanes fuselage and blew a hole in the craft, which Borleh was sucked out through.
A source close to the investigation said Borleh, a Somali national, took the explosive on to the plane within a laptop computer. He would have known where to sit and when to detonate the bomb. Had the airplane reached cruising altitude, the first blast would have set off a catastrophic second blast in the fuel tank, the source said. Thankfully, the TNT-laden explosive failed to take down the aircraft and the pilot turned back to land the plane at Mogadishu airport.
In another twist, Daallo Airlines chief executive confirmed on Monday (8 February) that the bomber was meant to be on a Turkish Airlines flight, which was cancelled due to bad weather. Mohamed Yassin said the bomber was among 70 stranded Turkish Airlines passengers who were picked up to be flown to Djibouti with his carrier. In total, the Daalo Airlines flight had 74 passengers.
