Bomber targeted Turkish Airlines flight

A MAN suspected of detonating a bomb on a plane as it took off from Somalia’s main airport was due to fly to Istanbul on board Turkish Airlines but was switched to a local airline at the last minute, it has been claimed.

The man, named by the Somali authorities as Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, died after he was sucked out of a hole blown in the fuselage of a Daallo Airlines flight to Djibouti. The airline’s chief executive told The

Telegraph that Mr Borle was meant to be flying from Mogadishu Airport with Turkish Airlines but the plane was grounded in Djibouti by high winds and his airline agreed to take its passengers instead.

“I believe he was due to fly onwards from Djibouti to Istanbul, like most of the passengers on that Turkish Airlines flight,” Mohamed Ibrahim Yasin Olad said. “The passengers were checked in by Turkish Airlines staff, they handled the passenger manifest, they even issued the boarding passes.”

A spokesman for Turkish Airlines, which has now suspended its flights to Somalia, refused to confirm the claims.

No group has so far taken responsibility for the attack but the US government has indicated that it suspects Al-Shabaab, the Somali-based militant group which is aligned to al-Qaeda, was responsible.

Mr Borle is suspected to have been a suicide bomber, Somali civil aviation sources said, but killed only himself in the explosion, around 15 minutes after the Daallo Airlines took off from Mogadishu airport last Tuesday. The flight’s Serbian pilot said there were “zero” security measures at the airport.