Screaming passengers watched in horror as a burning man was sucked from a plane at 11,000ft after a suspected bomb blew a hole in the fuselage.
Witnesses say his charred body fell to earth nearly 30km from Mogadishu airport in Somalia, where the plane had taken off five minutes earlier.
Incredibly, the aircraft’s pilot managed to land safely despite the explosion, which blasted a hole 6ft tall by 3ft (1.8m by 0.9m) wide in the side of the Airbus A321.
On Wednesday, survivor Hassan Mohamed Nur said one passenger caught fire before being sucked from his seat and through the hole in the plane.
The computer programmer told how the cabin filled with thick smoke as passengers screamed, adding: “I saw the passenger, a man in his early sixties, get sucked out.
“There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it. One minute he was in his seat, the next he was gone. People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.’
A police officer in the town of Balad said residents had found the body while an officer at Mogadishu airport said the body of the 55-year-old man was being brought to the capital.
"He dropped when the explosion occurred in the plane," the airport officer said.
Daallo Airlines flight D3159 was still climbing after taking off from Mogadishu with 75 passengers on board.
Serbian pilot Vladimir Vodopivec said far more would have died if the bomb had gone off when the plane reached its cruising altitude.
Vodopivec, 64, who was flying the aircraft to Djibouti, said: ‘I think it was a bomb. Luckily the flight controls were not damaged so I could land at the airport. We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank God it ended well.
‘It was my first bomb – I hope it will be the last. It would have been worse if we were higher.’
The airline said all passengers except one were accounted for, with two injured, including an elderly Finnish man who is in a stable condition in hospital.
Although investigators said a bomb was the most likely cause, no group has claimed responsibility and officials insist that no criminal acts were to blame.
But suspicion is likely to fall on the Islamic extremist group Al-Shabaab, which is fighting government forces in Somalia.
A source told CNN that tests found explosive residue, indicating that the aircraft was the victim of a terrorist attack.
John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, said only a bomb or a pressurisation blowout could cause a hole in the side of the aircraft. But he said soot around the hole indicated that it was caused by a bomb, adding: “It looks like a device.”
Somalia’s civil aviation authority is investigating the incident.
Daily Mail and ANA