The Senegalese press is reporting a bomb scare on-board a Royal Air Maroc Boeing 737-800 as it was about to depart from Dakar's Léopold Sédar Senghor (Yoff) International Airport early this morning, bound for the Moroccan city of Casablanca.
According to an interview by Dakar's RFM radio station with Colonel Hamidou Dia, the Secretary General of the Airport, at 2am, shortly before AT502's scheduled departure time, an anonymous phone call was received, stating that explosives had been put aboard the aircraft. This prompted an immediate evacuation of all passengers in the vicinity. Specialist bomb squads were called in for a thorough inspection of the jet which revealed nothing suspicious but this did, however, result in a delay to the flight, which only left at 5am.
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| Dakar's Léopold Sédar Senghor (Yoff) International Airport (WREH) |
Then this afternoon, an update was issued in which Senegalese Police had backtraced the anonymous caller's number:
"According to the radio RFM, the author of the hoax was arrested this afternoon by the Senegalese police. His arrest came hours after investigators correctly identified the number of the telephone booth where he made the call. "
The culprit was later identified as Cheikh Tidiane Sow, having been apprehended Wednesday afternoon and later imprisoned. Asked about the motive for the bomb, Tidiane Sow confessed:
"My wife had to travel by RAM on the Morocco-Dakar-Paris route. I had forbidden her and she refused to comply. I found a solution to it all by calling to create panic and block flight."