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Car crashes into aircraft in Nigeria

A suspected religious fanatic crashed through security gates of an airport in Nigeria's South Eastern state of Calabar with his car and rammed the vehicle into a passenger plane carrying 200 people.

Updated on: Apr 1, 2010, 13:55:25 IST
PTI | By , Abuja
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A suspected religious fanatic crashed through security gates of an airport in Nigeria's South Eastern state of Calabar with his car and rammed the vehicle into a passenger plane carrying 200 people.

HT Image
HT Image

There were no casualties and the passengers were evacuated safely.

Local newspapers reported that the man drove a taxi through the two gates of Margaret Ekpo International Airport, Calabar, without being stopped by security checks.

He then drove straight to the tarmac and hit the underbelly of a plane with boarded passengers waiting to take off.

He shouted, "Jesus is the redeemer. Everyone should repent and follow him because I will come back and complete the attack."

He was arrested and handcuffed by airport security. An anti-bomb squad came to cordon off the area and combed the entire airport for any explosives.

"We were inside the plane about to take off when the alarm came and we were asked to disembark. Initially, we thought it was fire and everybody scrambled down and when we got down, we discovered it was a car right under the belly of the aircraft," a passenger said.

Security remains concern at Nigerian airports after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, apparently passed through Lagos' international airport with explosives hidden on his body

Internal acts of terrorism are alien to Nigeria until this attempt.

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