A laptop computer may have concealed the explosives that ripped a hole in a Somali airliner Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the investigation and a Western official based in Mogadishu.
The bomb contained a military grade of the explosive TNT, according to the source familiar with the investigation, citing an initial analysis of residue recovered from the aircraft.
The blast happened Tuesday on Daallo Airlines Flight 3159 after it set off above East Africa.
Two people were injured before the pilot landed the Airbus A321-111 safely, a passenger said. Somali authorities later discovered a body near Mogadishu they believe fell from plane.
Pictures from the ground showed a hole in one side of the airliner, just above its wing and slightly smaller than one of its doors.
An airport official estimated the Daallo plane was between 12,000 and 14,000 feet high when the blast occurred not long after it took off from Mogadishu International Airport.
The pilot then flew the plane, which had originated in Jeddah on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, back to the Somali capital.
No group immediately took responsibility for the act.
However, a U.S. official told CNN that investigators believe extremist group Al-Shabaab is responsible for the explosion. Al-Shabaab has been behind some of the worst violence in recent years in and around Somalia.
Some of it targeted tourists, such as last month’s deadly attack on a beachside restaurant-hotel complex in Mogadishu. Young people also have been targets, as shown in the massacre at Kenya’s Garissa University College. The general public also hasn’t escaped the group’s violence, as evidenced in a 2013 assault on an upscale mall in Nairobi.
