JOIN USA secret FBI test of a correctly made version of the May 1 Times Square bomb revealed that it would have killed “thousands of people” if it had been made to explode as terrorists had intended, law-enforcement officials were quoted as saying by The New York Post.
“Had he built the device the way he had originally intended to, terrorist Faisal Shahzad would have turned his SUV and nearby vehicles into a fatal spray of razor-sharp fragments and transformed building windows into glass guillotines hurtling to the streets, cutting down hundreds of people walking by,” the paper said.
The results were discovered after authorities composed the type of bomb Shahzad set out to make — with the exact components he had initially intended to use — and exploded it in Pennsylvania last month. At the end of June, the FBI built its replica of the bomb and exploded it outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to test its destructive force.
The results of the explosive test were sobering — showing that 30-year-old Shahzad, son of a retired Pakistani Air Vice Marshal, was on track to becoming the biggest individual mass murderer in US history.
“It would have been the biggest thing ever to happen in this country since Sept 11,” the paper said. “It definitely would have been bigger than (the 1995) Oklahoma City” bombing of the federal building that killed 168 people, it quoted source as saying. “There would have been a lot of casualties.”
Shahzad’s homemade bomb — on which he substituted less effective, cheaper components for the more expensive and deadly components he had planned to use — was left in the back seat of his parked Sports Utility Vehicle in the middle of Times Square, where it smoldered but failed to detonate.