E-Paper
NY bomber used inferior explosives
The Times Square bomb made the right way “would have killed thousands of people” but Pakistani American bomber Faisal Shahzad used inferior explosives to avoid detection.
The Times Square bomb made the right way “would have killed thousands of people” but Pakistani American bomber Faisal Shahzad used inferior explosives to avoid detection.
“He tried to lessen the explosive nature of the fertiliser that was used because he thought he would get a higher profile as he went to buy it,” New York’s police commissioner Ray Kelly was cited as saying by the Wall Street Journal.
A secret FBI test of a correctly made version of the bomb revealed that it would have killed thousands of people if it had been made to explode as terrorists had intended.
The results were discovered after the FBI built its replica of the bomb Shahzad set out to make — with the exact components he had initially intended to use — and exploded it last month outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to test its destructive force.
