The suspect arrived at Malpensa airport with a small bottle filled with gasoline and a hammer.
He walked among the passengers in Terminal 1 and went on a rampage, throwing flammable liquid onto the check-in counters and then setting them on fire before being stopped. There were moments of terror this morning at the Milan airport, crowded with vacationers departing for their holidays.
The alarm was raised around 10:30 a.m. Seeing flames billowing with smoke at Gate 13, people fled, dragging their bulky luggage. They feared they were the victims of an attack. The visibly agitated man, who later turned out to be a 28-year-old Malian resident in Milan with a subsidiary protection permit, also began hammering the flight information monitors, making a noise similar to gunfire.
“I saw the check-in desk opposite mine on fire. I heard explosions and saw a man in a white shirt, a blue surgical mask, and a hat screaming. That’s when I started running for my life, holding my husband’s hand,” Sophie, a British tourist, told the British Mirror. But like her, many have recalled other attacks, such as the 2016 one at Brussels Airport, where two explosions in the check-in queues killed 16 people in addition to the two suicide bombers. “Madness,” some commented on social media. “I thought I was going to die.”
That wasn’t the case. A worker immediately attempted to put out the spreading flames, while nearby, a manager from SEA, the Milan airport management company, intervened. He threw himself on top of the young man, using a fire extinguisher as a shield, after unsuccessfully demanding that he put down the hammer. Meanwhile, several passengers and SEA security personnel arrived to help, disarming the young man. The police also arrested him. The man, who was wearing beige pants, a white polo shirt, a baseball cap pulled down over his head, and a face mask, was arrested by the Polaria on charges of aggravated damage. Meanwhile, Malpensa firefighters intervened, evacuating the terminal and securing the area where flames and, especially, smoke had been released.
There were long moments with all the passengers crowded outside the airport before the return to normality, without any particular consequences for flights but with much fear and a news story that, thanks to the images filmed by travelers, went around the world. The twenty-eight-year-old has only one previous offense: yesterday he was reported by the Carabinieri in Milan for damaging a shop window with a hammer. According to what he said, his was a sort of “revenge” against the airport. Last August 16th, he had already arrived at Malpensa where he had attempted to board a flight to Saudi Arabia, but was prevented from doing so and his passport was confiscated because it was deemed a fake.
The disruption to passengers was limited. That said, it’s not easy to immediately subdue an agitated attacker with bare hands. Had we had the tools to stop their actions, the damage to the airport would have been more limited,” observed ENAC President Pierluigi Di Palma. The twenty-eight-year-old is currently being held in a holding cell at Malpensa. The validation of his arrest and the summary trial are already scheduled for tomorrow. “One of the ‘resources’ that will pay our pensions, according to the left,” quipped Matteo Salvini on social media, followed by several other center-right figures.
