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The Somali terrorist was carrying more than 13 times the amount of explosives that al Qaeda-linked operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was packing in his undies in his failed attempt to blow up a jet over Detroit.
"We don't know whether [the November suspect is] linked with al Qaeda or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Somali police spokesman Abdulahi Hassan Barise.
In Washington, US officials said the Homeland Security Department did not learn of the Nov. 13 incident until yesterday morning.
It resembled Abdulmutallab's Christmas Day attempt to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 80 grams of the explosive PETN -- believed to be enough to blow a hole in the plane.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said linking the Somalia case to the foiled Christmas attack "would be speculative at this point."
The suspect in the Somali incident initially told authorities, who had recognized him as a member of the al Shabaab Islamist insurgency group, that the chemicals were for his farm.
Security Minister Abdullahi Mohamed Ali told reporters in the capital city of Mogadishu that he believed the powder was explosive, and it had been sent to London for analysis. Somali officials do not believe the man sought to bomb the jet, which was operated by Daallo Airlines and was headed to Somaliland and Djibouti before Dubai, as it contained religious pilgrims.
The news came as Washington was abuzz over whether heads will roll because of the stunning intelligence failure to detect Abdulmutallab.
US intelligence chief Adm. Dennis Blair and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are obvious contenders for the chopping block, but administration officials gave no hints as Republicans hammered the Obama administration over the security lapse.
Meanwhile, Yemeni forces stormed an al Qaeda lair yesterday, wounding several terrorists, as the country's leaders vowed to destroy the group that orchestrated the bombing attempt over Detroit.
US officials said Abdulmutallab has provided some leads to help find his Yemeni handlers, but locating them won't be easy, since huge parts of the country, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, are lawless.
In other developments yesterday:
* A senior US intelligence official downplayed the quality of the information authorities had on the Christmas plot, telling Politico.com, "Abdulmutallab's father didn't say his son was a terrorist, let alone planning an attack . . . I'm not aware of some magic piece of intelligence that suddenly would have flagged this guy -- whose name nobody even had until November -- as a killer en route to America."
* A comprehensive report prepared by the CIA's Africa desk on Abdulmutallab was not sent to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) because the analyst lacked a photo of the 23-year-old Nigerian national, sources told Fox News.
* It emerged that Abdulmutallab had attended a two-week Islamic studies program at the AlMaghrib Institute in Houston last year.
* Nigeria announced that travelers departing on international flights would be subject to full body scans, while the Dutch government announced that travelers on all US-bound flights out of Amsterdam will undergo a body scan or physical patdown.
chuck.bennett@nypost.com
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