A White House official said the incident was believed to be an attempted terror attack. (AFP Photo)
Passengers Tackle Man With Explosives on US Plane
A
Nigerian man with reported links to Al-Qaeda tried to blow up a US
airliner with a new type of explosive device Friday before being
tackled by passengers in what officials said was an attempted Christmas
Day terror attack.
Some travellers aboard Northwest Airlines
Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit panicked but others sprang into
action, overwhelming the man as he lit the device, which reportedly
made a popping sound and burst into flames.
The suspect's
clothes caught fire and he suffered serious burn wounds. The incident
could have been "catastrophic," US Representative Peter King told US
media.
White House officials and US lawmakers said the incident
was a terror attack and President Barack Obama, on vacation with his
family in Hawaii, ordered increased security measures after being
briefed on the attempt.
"We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism," a senior White House official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Obama
held a secure conference call with his Homeland Security and
Counter-terrorism Advisor John Brennan, and National Security Council
chief of staff Denis McDonough.
Obama "instructed that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel," the White House said.
"The president is actively monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates," the statement read.
The incident unfolded around noon local time (1700 GMT) when the passenger lit what was initially described as a firework.
Initial reports said the man had been "subdued" after causing a disturbance but no harm.
But
subsequent details painted a much more serious picture, in which a man
with alleged extremist links had tried to set off a sophisticated and
previously unused type of explosive.
King, the senior Republican
on the House of Representatives Homeland Security committee, said the
passenger was a 23-year-old Nigerian who boarded the plan in Nigeria.
"My
understanding also is that while he is not on a watch list, he
definitely has terror connections," King told Fox news. "There is a
terrorist nexus leading towards Al-Qaeda involving this assailant."
King said the man had tried to detonate "a fairly sophisticated device."
"When
it did go off he himself was seriously injured, my understanding is he
has third degree burns. This could have been catastrophic," King said.
King said that it could have been "a somewhat new type" of device.
"I
know it was fairly sophisticated, and from what I've heard about the
way it was going to be detonated, it seems to be different from what
we've seen before," he added.
US media, citing a federal
security bulletin, said the man told investigators he had acquired the
explosive device in Yemen, along with instructions as to when it should
be used.
Sandra Berchtold, an FBI spokeswoman in Detroit, told
AFP the incident was under investigation, and the Transportation Safety
Administration said it had isolated the plane and was conducting
additional screening.
"All passengers de-planed and out of an
abundance of caution the plane was moved to a remote area where the
plane and all the baggage are currently being re-screened," the agency
said in a statement.
The incident drew comparisons with the case
of the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who attempted to bomb a
trans-Atlantic flight in December 2001 by igniting explosives smuggled
aboard in his shoes.
As with the Reid case, initial reports suggested passengers were responsible for preventing a more serious situation.
The Reid incident sparked an drastic increase in security on airplane flights.
Syed Jafry, a passenger aboard the flight, told CNN that one traveler in particular tackled the man.
"He took care of that suspect. He handled him pretty good," Jaffry said.
"There was a little bit, obviously, of a struggle. And I think he took it under control."
In the Netherlands, anti-terrorism officials said the suspect was not a Dutch national or resident.
The
man arrived at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport on a connecting flight, said
Judith Sluiter, the spokeswoman for the Netherlands' anti-terrorism
coordinator.
Sluiter however was unable to specify from which
country the man had arrived to the airport but King told Fox News the
man "boarded the plane in Nigeria and then connected on in Amsterdam to
Detroit."
AFP
jujubean
2:33 PM December 28, 2009Humh. The politics of language is really important here. She is unstable and he is a terrorist. Was she not trying to terrorize the pope? I remember when they finally convicted the Atlanta Olympics bomber. The word terrorist was not used in any of the main new site stories, and that conviction was done in post 9-11 world. We cant post links here, so look it up yourself. I would love to be proven wrong if you can find something. But the danger here is framing the argument and not the actual argument.