Al-Qaida Group Eyed in Plane Explosion

The Somalia-based al-Qaida affiliate Al Shabaab has been fingered by U.S. investigators as the likely culprit of a plane blast that sucked out a passenger and sent him hurtling to his death during a flight over eastern Africa.

Al Shabaab is a radical Muslim outfit that’s been waging war against the Western-backed Somalia government for some time. The group hasn’t claimed responsibility for the horrific explosion that sent a reportedly badly burned body to the ground over Somalia, as WND reported.

But U.S. investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they’d detected traces of possible TNT explosive on the craft and that it was believed Al Shabaab set off a bomb, the Daily Mail reported.

The Daallo Airlines Flight D3159 was forced to make an emergency landing just five minutes after taking off, due to the blast. One witness, Hassan Mohamed Nur, said the cabin went black and smoke filled the air, and then a man was sucked through the gaping hole in the plane’s fuselage.

“I saw the passenger, a man in his early 60s, get sucked out of the plane,” he said to the Daily Mail. “There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it. One minute he was in his seat, the next he was gone. He’d been sucked out of the plane. People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.” (Read more from “Al-Qaida Group Eyed in Plane Explosion” HERE)

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