NYC Car Bomb Fails to Detonate

Love | Peace In a combo of caring and quick thinking, police surveillance and bad bomb making, the car-bomb explosion targeted for New York’s Times Square didn’t go off last night. Much of the Times Square area of New York was sealed off last night.

At 6:28 p.m., a video surveillance camera recorded what was believed to be the dark green Nissan S.U.V. driving west on 45th Street.

Moments later a T-shirt street vendor saw smoke coming out of the vehicle, parked ackwardly on the sidewalk with motor running and hazard light on. The vendor called a mounted police officer who smelled gunpowder. The evaculation of Times Square began.

“Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fireworks — the apparent source of the “pops” — and two clocks with batteries,” said New York Major Michael Bloomberg. He said the device “looked amateurish.” via NY Times

Update on Sun, May 2, 2010 by Anne

Reuters is reporting Pakistani Taliban claim failed New York bomb attack.

By tomorrow 10 different groups may take responsibility.  The Telegraph UK reports that the Pakistani Taliban has a history of falsely claiming resonsibility.

The Telegraph also reports another interesting line of possibility, one that suits the ‘amateurish’ nature of the operation that could have caused considerable damage and possible loss of life. The car was parked just yards away from Viacom, the parent of Comedy Central and ‘South Park’.

After the 200th episode of South Park, which lampooned a wide case of characters including Moses, Jesus and Buddha, a US-born Muslim convert called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, had published the address of Viacom’s offices on his Revolution Muslimwebsite.

Some Muslims consider the South Park offence as serious as that the Danish cartoonist. Read Frontline. The show was absolutey chilling to see the global mob responses to a cartoon.

Cognizant that Islam forbids the depiction of its holiest prophet, Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker showed their “South Park” characters agonizing over how to bring Muhammad to their fictional Colorado town. At first the character said to be Muhammad is confined to a U-Haul trailer, and is heard speaking but is not shown. Later in the episode the character is let out of the trailer, dressed in a bear costume. via NYTimes