Somali tried to board plane with chemicals, syringe

A man tried to board a commercial airliner in the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month with chemicals that authorities believe could have been used as an explosive device, an African Union official said Wednesday.

The suspect, Abdi Hassan Abdi, tried to board a Daallo Airlines flight with a plastic bag containing 600 grams of ammonium nitrate and half a liter of concentrated sulfuric acid in a plastic bottle, according to Wafula Waminyinyi, the deputy special representative for the African Union Mission for Somalia.

Waminyinyi said that Abdi also had approximately 5 milliliters of an unidentified liquid in a syringe that he tried to carry on board the flight, which was bound first for the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then Djibouti, and then Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He said that the African Union believes the chemicals could have caused an explosion.

The details bear resemblance to those from the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan.

Disturbing.