Shamsud-Din Jabbar's attempt to detonate two bombs in New Orleans, using the powerful explosive RDX, has been compared to the methods of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Experts believe the bombs, had they functioned, could have caused hundreds of casualties due to the shrapnel spread from the highly volatile RDX. However, Jabbar's plan failed because he used an electric match, an unsuitable detonator for such a powerful explosive. His apparent knowledge of RDX but lack of expertise in its detonation has baffled investigators.
By making a bomb with the powerful explosive RDX , Shamsud-Din Jabbar was mimicking the tactics of terrorist groups operating in the Middle East, experts say. built two bombs using what investigators believe was an explosive so powerful that they could have sprayed shrapnel hundreds of yards and potentially killed or wounded hundreds of people. built with a compound believed to be RDX would have had devastating effects were it not for an amateurish blunder.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Tony May, a retired ATF agent who also worked as an Army explosive enforcement officer in Afghanistan. “The thing to me that is most troubling is that other people may try to do this now,” said David Hyche, a former ATF agent who is now the chief of police in Calera, Alabama.
At his home in Houston, investigators found explosive materials that field tests identified as RDX. They also found explosive materials at a home he rented in New Orleans that tests initially identified as R-Salt, an explosive similar in chemical makeup to RDX. But the ATF said Sunday that it now believes that more thorough lab tests will show that it, too, was RDX.
Terrorist groups in the Middle East have bombmakers who synthesize their own high explosives but that is rarely seen in the U.S. The two most well-known cases of that are the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
Terrorism Explosives RDX Bomb Plot New Orleans
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