American airline attack: Terror in the sky
An attempt to down an airliner, apparently insired by al-Qaeda, thankfully fails EYEWITNESSES on the Northwest Airlines flight 253 between Amsterdam and Detroit on Christmas day spoke of a loud bang, a struggle and smoke and screams shortly before the plane touched down at its destination. It emerged that the chaotic scenes were of flight attendants and fellow passengers tackling a man apparently attempting to detonate a device concealed on his body. That he was unsuccessful in his apparent attempt to down the airliner is both a testament to the quick reactions of those travelling with him and the seemingly experimental nature of the device he was trying to let off. The seriousness of this new threat to airline safety is clear. “This was the real deal,” said Peter King, a senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. The White House declared the incident an “attempted act of terrorism”. The details of the failed attack are still unclear but some facts have emerged. The man who carried out the attack on a plane carrying 289 people is variously named as Abdul or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young a Nigerian man who boarded a flight in Lagos, the country’s capital and transferred to the Northwest jet in Amsterdam. He is believed to have spent several of the past few years studying at a university in London. …
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American airline attack: Terror in the sky