US President Barack Obama has said the security and intelligence failures that enabled a Nigerian to board a US-bound plane with explosives are unacceptable.

The US leader criticised the flaws in US intelligence after learning that a security agency had prior information that might have averted the attempted bombing of the plane with almost 300 passengers on board. The information that the 23-year-old Nigerian was a threat was not distributed properly throughout the US government.

The potential would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his clothes before landing in Detroit. Mr Obama, who had to interrupt his short Christmas holiday in Hawaii because of the incident, said he wanted to act quickly to fix systemic flaws and that there was "no excuse" for such a failure.

The president has ordered two reviews into the attack, one into the no-fly list system and another into how the Nigerian managed to sneak an explosive device past security at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport onto a plane with a US destination.

US President Obama by ANP