Somali officials: Suicide bomber may have blown hole in jet

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A suicide bomber is suspected to have set off the explosive that blew a hole in a jetliner, sucked the man out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing Tuesday in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, Somali officials said Saturday.

"Experts who were investigating the cause of the blast in the plane concluded that a bomb was the cause," said Ali Jama Jangali, Somalia's transport minister, at a news conference in Mogadishu.

"The bomb aimed to kill all onboard the plane. Al-Shabab (Somalia's Islamic extremist rebel group) was behind it," he said of the explosion on a Daallo Airlines Airbus 321. He said the findings are preliminary and the investigation is continuing.

One passenger, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, died, according to Somali officials who did not give any details. A man's body was found in the town of Balad, about 18 miles north of Mogadishu, according to police who said he might have been blown from the plane.

The man killed in the incident is suspected to have been a suicide bomber, the Associated Press was told by a senior Somali civil aviation official, who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

"The reason the investigation is focusing on him now is because of the suspicion that he might have detonated the bomb, but it's too early to say if the bomb was planted in a laptop or not," he said.

Six people have been arrested in connection with the blast after examinations of CCTV images in the airport, a senior Somali intelligence official said.

Al-Shabab have not claimed responsibility for the incident.

All other 74 passengers on the plane were safe after the pilot returned the plane safely to Mogadishu airport.

The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane took off and it was still ascending.

Capt. Vlatko Vodopivec, the pilot, said he and others were told the explosion was caused by a bomb.

He said the blast happened when the plane was at around 11,000 feet and still climbing to its cruising altitude of 30,000 feet. "It would have been much worse if we were higher," he added.

Experts from Somalia and Greece are involved in the investigation into the blast.