The explosion that forced a commercial airliner flying over Somalia to make an emergency landing at the Mogadishu airport late Tuesday after it left a gaping hole in the airplane's side is suspected to have been caused by a laptop computer that was concealing military grade explosives, sources familiar with the ongoing investigation said, according to CNN.
Based on an initial analysis of leftover residue recovered from the aircraft, investigators have been led to believe that the suspected bomb contained a military grade of TNT, the source added.
The blast occurred Tuesday onboard Daallo Airlines Flight 3159 shortly after it set off for Djibouti, forcing it to make an almost immediate emergency landing, Fox News reported.
All of the passengers, including two who were injured from the blast, were evacuated after the pilot landed the Airbus A321-111 without incident. Officials believed that those two were the only casualties at the time, but they soon found that one person was missing. The missing person's body was later found in the Balcad region, about 19 miles north of Mogadishu. Authorities said that they believed he was sucked out of the plane when the blast occurred.
Witnesses and experts had been under the impression that a bomb was responsible for the blast. John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety and aviation safety expert, shared the sentiment noting that only two things could have caused the blast: a bomb or a pressurization blowout caused by a flaw or fatigue in the plane's skin, according to USA Today.
He argued at that time that a pressurization blowout was unlikely since the incident occurred before the plane reached 30,000 feet, where pressurization is at its maximum. His arguments have been credence by the fact that an airport official estimated that the plane was between 12,000 and 14,000 feet in altitude when the explosion hit.
A group has yet to take responsibility for the blast, but a U.S. official confirmed that investigators are going forward under the impression that extremist group Al-Shabab are the perpetrators of the act.
Al-Shabab have been responsible for a series of attacks in Somalia and neighboring countries. Last month, foreign tourists were targeted when the group attacked a beachside restaurant-hotel complex in Mogadishu. In April, 147 people were killed when the extremists launched an assault on Garissa University in neighboring Kenya. And in 2013, 67 people were killed when the group launched an attack on Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
