Explosives residue found on Somalia jet

The head of the airline whose jetliner was damaged by an explosion shortly after takeoff from Somalia says investigators have found what appears to be residue from explosives on the plane.

Daallo Airlines chief executive Mohammed Ibrahim Yassin from the carrier’s corporate office in Dubai said that it is too soon to say a bomb was to blame.

He said the airline has temporarily suspended its operations in the Somali capital following Tuesday’s incident but hopes to restart them soon.

The Airbus A321 was carrying 74 passengers when an explosion blew a hole in the fuselage on Tuesday.

One passenger remains unaccounted for, though residents in a town north of Mogadishu have found the body of a man who may have been sucked from the plane.

The Serbian pilot has said he thought the blast, which ripped the fuselage from inside to out, had been an explosive device, according to reports in the Serbian newspaper Blic.

Pilot Vladimir Vodopivec, aged 64, told a friend he thought it was “a bomb”, without giving more details.

Photographs show a large hole — about a metre in diameter — just above the engines on the right wing, with streaks of soot on the plane.