Indian origin woman recounts terror on Delta flight

A Montreal woman said she feared for her life after hearing several bangs that sounded like gun shots, and seeing a man on fire while her plane was landing in Detroit Friday.
“The man was on fire and the flames were so high, they almost hit the roof of the plane,” said Dollard des Ormeaux resident Shama Chopra, 54, who travelled from Mumbai to Amsterdam, and then to Detroit, before landing in Montreal late last night.
Chopra said she was sitting in business class, about four rows ahead of the 23-year-old Nigerian man, who authorities said may have links to Al-Qa’ida. He apparently tried to set off an explosive device aboard the Delta Air Lines plane as it approached Detroit Friday, but was overpowered by passengers and crew.
“The plane was about to land, and the landing gear wasn’t down yet, that’s when this guy set himself on fire,” she said. “I thought we were all gone. Thank God, somehow the plane landed.”
Chopra said she heard what sounded like gun shots coming from the front of the economy class section, and then looked back and saw the man on fire. A group of three passengers grabbed the burning man and tried to extinguish the flames. She said they asked passengers to pass over their water bottles to put out the fire.
“I was a bit sick, so I had four or five water bottles with me,” said Chopra, who was visiting family in India. “The men started screaming, ‘water! water!’ so I gave all my bottles to them.”
She said the men restraining the man threw him on the floor, jumped on him and tried to put out the flames with their hands, and then with water bottles.
“They burned their hands,” she said.
Eventually, flight attendants took fire extinguishers and doused the flames. The man was tied up and taken into the first class section. Chopra said it took between seven and eight minutes to put out the fire.
“He was very quiet after that. He didn’t say much, but he was alive.”
She said there was sheer panic in the cabin as all of this happened.
Chopra said she had seen the man just before the flight took off, because she was standing nearby. She said he looked worried.
The White House identified the man as Abdul Mudallad.
Peter King, a New York Republican who sits on the Homeland Security Committee told CNN Mudallad “did appear in a database as far as having a terrorist connection.”
“My understanding is ... that he does have Al-Qa’ida connections, certainly extremist terrorist connections, and his name popped up pretty quickly” in a search of intelligence data bases, King said.
He suffered third-degree burns and was taken into custody. The passengers, two of whom suffered minor injuries, disembarked safely from the Delta Air Lines plane, which had departed from Amsterdam.
“We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
President Barack Obama is on vacation in Hawaii and was monitoring the situation.
25/12/09 Jason Magder/The Gazette/Canada.com

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Foreign Dec 2009, Safety Dec 2009