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Design of bombs targeting Trump critics came from Internet: Source

Reuters
Washington, DC, USAUpdated: Oct 26, 2018, 07:14 AM IST
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Representative image. Photograph:(Reuters)

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Authorities are investigating 10 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of US President Donald Trump with the focus on leads in Florida, a federal law enforcement source said.

Investigators believe that the design and instructions for building the bombs sent to several critics of US President Donald Trump this week were taken from the internet, a federal law enforcement official told Reuters on Thursday.

The instructions for such devices are widely available on websites and in propaganda distributed by Islamic militant groups including Al Qaeda and ISIS, said the official and a former federal government bomb expert.

The federal official also said the designs could have been lifted from "The Anarchist Cookbook," a notorious bomb and hacker manual dating to the early 1970s.

There was no claim of responsibility for the spate bombs, none of which exploded. 

Meanwhile, Washington, DC, news radio station WMAL said on Thursday it had received a suspicious package and its building has been evacuated.

Authorities are investigating 10 pipe bombs sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of US President Donald Trump with the focus on leads in Florida, a federal law enforcement source said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday (October 25) said he hopes that the recent spate of mailed pipe bombs, is a wake up call that "We have to begin to put this country back together again."

He said, "This division, this hatred, is ugliness. It has to end. Words matter."