A Nigerian man tried to light a powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed Friday in Detroit in what senior U.S. officials called an attempted act of terrorism.
Flight 253 with 278 passengers and 11 crew members aboard was 20 minutes from the airport when passengers heard popping noises, witnesses said. Passengers saw the attempted attack, and at least one of them jumped on the man and subdued him, airline officials and passengers said.
The man had “some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite” in a bag strapped to his body, U.S. officials told NBC News. Other officials told NBC station WDIV-TV of Detroit that the device was a mixture of powder and liquid, which failed to ignite when the passenger tried to detonate it during the plane’s descent into Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.
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Stricter security measures were imposed on airline travel, but those were not specified.
Federal officials identified the man as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of Nigeria, who was traveling one way, without a return ticket. Dawn Griffith, who was waiting for her husband on the plane, said she saw the man being carted away on a gurney or bed, with his bandaged hands handcuffed to the railing.
The man was being treated at the burn unit of the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, officials said.
In terrorism files?
Rep. Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident, said Abdulmutallab was known in federal counterterrorism files and may have been on the government’s list of suspicious passengers banned from flying in the United States.
King said the incident raised troubling questions about airline security. “It must be looked into” how Abdulmutallab was able to sneak a “somewhat sophisticated device” on board, he said.
A spokeswoman for police at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam declined comment about the case or about security procedures at the airport for Flight 253. Schiphol airport, one of Europe's busiest has a heavy load of transit passengers from Africa and Asia to North America.
Abdulmutallab told investigators that he wanted to set off a bomb over the United States, counterterrorism officials said.
A counterterrorism official said Abdulmutallab, who was subdued by the crew of Northwest Air Lines Flight 253 from Amsterdam, left Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday and boarded the flight in Amsterdam on Friday.
God have mercy
