Bomber ‘planned Christmas carnage’
Mounted police officers patrol the streets of Stockholm. Security has been stepped up in the Swedish capital after Saturday's suicide bomb attack. Mounted police officers patrol the streets of Stockholm. Security has been stepped up in the Swedish capital after Saturday's suicide bomb attack.
Stockholm - A suicide bomber who blew himself up in Stockholm at the weekend was carrying a cocktail of explosives and probably meant to wreak carnage among Christmas shoppers, investigators said Monday.
As police searched the father-of-three's home near London, Sweden's chief prosecutor confirmed investigators believed the bomber was a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain and was bent on killing “as many people as possible”.
After an Islamist group said Taymour Abdelwahab targeted Sweden on Saturday over its military presence in Afghanistan, prosecution chief Tomas Lindstrand warned the bomber would likely have had accomplices.
While the results of DNA tests were still needed for confirmation, Lindstrand told reporters he was “98 percent” certain of the bomber's identity but was trying to work out his eventual target before he blew himself up prematurely.
“He had a bomb belt on him, he had a backpack with a bomb and he was carrying an object that has been compared to a pressure cooker. If it had all blown up at the same time, it would have been very powerful,” he said.
“Where he was headed... we don't know. It is likely that something happened, that he made some kind of mistake that led to part of the bombs he was carrying went off and caused his death.
“This was during Christmas shopping in central Stockholm and he was extremely well-equipped when it came to bomb material ... It is not much of a stretch to say he was going to a place with as many people as possible.”
While it had been established the suspect carried out the attack alone, investigators “have to assume he worked with several people”, Lindstrand told reporters. - Sapa-AFP