AN FBI official said a pipe bomb found in a Colorado mailbox appeared linked to 16 others found in three Midwestern states, raising concerns that the domestic terrorism spree is spreading West.
”We have a rather disturbing pattern where the subjects are moving West rather quickly,” FBI agent Mark Mershon said. ”We’re looking for someone who is mobile. We’re moving mountains to determine who that is.”
A resident found the device in a sandwich bag with a piece of folded paper in the small mountain community of Salida, about 160 kilometres southwest of Denver. It did not explode.
”The device is consistent in description and appearance with 16 other devices recovered since Friday in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska,” Mershon said.
He said the fact that the other devices were found in clusters makes authorities fear that more bombs may be delivered in the area. Postal carriers near Salida have been told not to deliver materials to any closed mailbox but that they could deliver to the home’s front door.
Mershon said he hadn’t seen the paper inside with the device, so he didn’t know whether it was similar to the anti-government letter found with the other devices. A bomb squad from the Colorado Springs Police Department took the bomb. It wasn’t clear whether police planned to detonate it. Also on Monday, another mailbox bomb was found in rural Nebraska.
It was the eighth discovered in the state and the 16th in the Midwest since last week.
None of the wounded suffered life-threatening injuries.
The latest Nebraska pipe bomb was found near Hastings in the mailbox of someone who had been away for the weekend, authorities said. It did not explode. There was no immediate word on whether it was accompanied by the same anti-government note found with the other devices.
The explosive was disarmed on Monday evening by Nebraska State Patrol bomb technicians after it was removed from the rural Clay County mailbox by a robot. Authorities had detonated the other Nebraska bombs. There have been no arrests in the case.
The FBI said on Monday that the first 15 bombs clearly come from the same source, but officials have not said whether they are searching for an individual or a group.
The latest bombs were found as hundreds of nervous letter
carriers went back to work across the Midwest. Mail delivery had been suspended on Saturday, and rural residents in at least four Midwest states and Colorado were asked to leave their mailboxes open or remove their mailbox doors as a safety measure.
Jim Pelzer wore safety goggles and earplugs as he delivered mail in Tipton, Iowa, where one of the bombs exploded Friday. The protective gear was a gift from his wife.
”My feeling was when we had 9-11 and the anthrax scare, I was a little concerned about my job safety,” Pelzer said. ”But now I’m intimidated and scared.”
The FBI said the bombs and the notes were nearly identical. Officials described the Midwest bombs as two-centimetre steel pipes attached to 9-volt batteries, and said they appeared to be triggered by being touched or moved.
The typewritten note found with the bombs read, in part: ”If the government controls what you want to do they control what you can do. … I’m obtaining your attention in the only way I can. More info is on its way. More ‘attention getters’ are on the way.”
The FBI considers the attacks a case of domestic terrorism, and profiling experts have said whoever wrote the note is probably an older American man.
Dan Mihalko of the Postal Inspection Service in Washington said there is no indication that the Postal Service or its employees are the intended targets.
Bob Temple of Morrison, Illinois, said he cautiously opened his mailbox Sunday night to ease his carrier’s fears. Temple’s carrier was wounded when a pipe bomb blew up in her face while she was delivering mail to his next-door neighbour.
”I was pretty confident that the people that done it probably wouldn’t be back this way, but it did kind of scare me,” Temple said. ”It was a relief when the door opened and nothing happened.” – Sapa-AP