Somali plane bomb: What happened?
A passenger plane made an emergency landing at Mogadishu airport recently with a huge hole in its side and one passenger missing. Somali officials later confirmed reports that a bomb had gone off but several questions remain unanswered:
Who planted the bomb?
One suggestion is that the suspected bomber is the same man who was missing and later confirmed at dead.
We don't know that for sure.
Somali officials say the missing man was called Abdulahi Abdisalam Borle, had a Somali passport and was around 55 years old.
He, along with most of the passengers, was meant to get on a Turkish Airlines flight but it was cancelled and Daallo Airlines took the passengers instead.
There has been speculation that the passenger was in a wheelchair but Daallo Airlines head Mohamed Yaseen Olad told BBC's Newsday that this was not recorded when he was checked in.
Investigators told AFP news agency that he was "probably" propelled out of the hole in the side of the plane caused by the explosion.
On the same day, a man was found dead on the ground in in Balad, an agricultural town 30km (18 miles) north of Mogadishu.
But the body has not been positive identified.
How did a bomb get onto the plane?
Somali authorities have released a video they say shows a laptop being given to the passenger after he has passed through the security checkpoint.
A man in an orange hi-vis vest is shown walking with a man in a blue shirt holding what looks like a laptop. Another man in a hat approaches them and it is alleged that the laptop is handed over.
The implication is that an explosive device was concealed in the laptop.
They have since arrested 20 people, including airport staff.
Aviation expert David Learmont, however, is sceptical that the video is all that conclusive.
"I don't think that anybody knows for sure if this is the transaction that was behind the bombing," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme.
But he added that airport staff are the weak point in security all over the world.
"One of the easiest ways into today's system is to subvert employees who have passes to go into airside," he added.
The pilot of the plane was slightly more blunt in an interview with Associated Press. "The security is zero," Vlatko Vodopivec said.
Why didn't the bomb make more of an impact?
The plane's pilot told AP that if the explosion happened when the aircraft was at a higher altitude it could have caused the jet to crash.
Bomb disposal specialist David Denman explains that a relatively small explosion - from the amount you can fit in a laptop case or even smaller - can have a "catastophic" effect.
That's because a small explosion, causing a small hole would create a secondary effect if the cabin is pressurised and the plane is flying at a high altitude.
Mr Denman explains that in that circumstance, the difference in pressure would cause the contents of the plane to be sucked out, making a bigger hole, the pilot losing control and possibly leading to the plane breaking into bits.
Instead the bomb went off roughly 15 minutes after the plane took off, at 11,000ft (3,350m).
This resulted in a hole in the side of the plane of around one metre but the pilot managed to land the plane safely.
So this really leads to the question - why did the bomb explode when it did?
That is impossible to know without speaking to those involved in the plot.
Why hasn't anyone claimed responsibility for the bomb?
The BBC Somali service's Abdirahman Koronto suggests that a militant group would have said they were behind the attack if there had been a bigger impact.
He points out that, usually, the main Islamist militants group in Somalia, al-Shabab, says it has carried out an attack a few hours after it has happened.
The group used a laptop bomb three years ago. But in the 2013 attack it was used in conjunction with a car bomb and six people died.
On the other hand, he points out there are also attacks that no-one has admitted to.In December 2013 three Syrian doctors and their Somali colleague were shot dead in an ambush, something al-Shabab denied being involved in.
Read more about al-Shabab in Somalia:
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