Hiiraan Online
Sunday, February 14, 2016
MOGADISHU (HOL) – A Turkish cargo plane has landed at the Mogadishu airport Sunday days after the Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabab group bombed a Daallo Airlines which made an emergency landing with a gaping hole on its side, officials said.
A suspected suicide bomber detonated a bomb allegedly planted in a laptop inside Daallo airlines on early February which damaged the plane’s fuselage. Only one person thought to be the bomber died after he sucked out of the plane.
Al Shabab claimed the responsibility for the bombing, saying it was targeting western and Turkish intelligence official on-board the plane.
The new flight by the Turkish Airlines comes after the Turkish flag bearer halted its flights to Mogadishu and has since diverted its flights to Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway Somaliland region, northern Somalia.
It’s unclear if Sunday flight heralds the resumption of the airliner’s regular flights to Mogadishu.
The mysterious mid-air explosion in Daallo Airlines’ aircraft has sent alarm across the world as security experts warned that the attack showed militant group’s desire to add attacks on air transportation into their global jihad catalog.
In October last year, a Russian airliner was brought down by a bomb in Egypt’s Sinai, killing all 224 people on board. The ISIS group claimed it was behind the bombing.