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Luddite
I watch Fox News


Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
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German Train Terror
#5934915 - 08/05/06 03:17 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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German Train Terror By Stephen Brown FrontPageMagazine.com | August 4, 2006
The failure of two suitcase bombs to explode on separate German trains this week most likely prevented Germany from joining the ranks of London and Madrid on the list horrific commuter bombings.
The first bomb was discovered on Monday on a 120-passenger regional train that ran between Aachen and Hamm, cities located in the north-western German state of North Rhineland-Westphalia. A conductor discovered a suitcase in an empty passenger section at the Hamm end of the run and sent it to the Dortmund train station because there was no lost and found office in Hamm.
In Dortmund, railway employees opened the suitcase to try and establish the identity of the owner. To their horror, what they discovered instead was a full, 11-kilogramm butane gas tank, an alarm clock, batteries, cables and a 4.5 liter bottle filled with a gas mixture. They immediately summoned the police and fire department who emptied the train station of passengers and sealed it off until explosive experts could defuse the bomb.
The second explosive, packed in a similar-looking suitcase, was also discovered in a regional train, but on Sunday and on one that ran between Moenchengladbach and Koblenz. This lethal package was only opened on Tuesday in the Koblenz train station. Its contents were similar to those found in the Dortmund suitcase.
The German federal office responsible for investigating the suitcase bombs says both deadly devices were professionally built. Investigators believe the bombs are either part of a criminal extortion plot directed at the German railway system or an attempted terrorist attack. Since no ransom demand has been received, the 100 security officials assigned to the case are investigating the two incidents from the terrorism angle.
Expressing the shock of the German investigators, Juergen Kleis, head of the Dortmund police force’s criminal department said the explosive in the suitcase his city received was capable of detonation and that there would have been many dead and wounded upon activation.
Ina Holznagel of Dortmund’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office was even more explicit.
“If the bomb had exploded, the train would have been destroyed,” she said.
According to a report that appeared in “Focus Online”, a German news publication, police suspect the only reason the bombs didn’t detonate was because the gas bottles that were to ignite them were too full.
“With the Dortmund bomb, the gas bottle was filled to the brim and the gas concentration too high,” one police expert told the publication. “An explosion can only result when there is also sufficient air in the bottle. It is only dangerous when there is the right gas-air mixture.”
Focus Online also reported that the perpetrator(s) also wanted to feign a chemical-biological attack with the Dortmund bomb. A bag containing a harmless white powder, it stated, was found with the bomb ready to be dispersed with the explosion.
However, while investigators now possess good knowledge about the bombs, they have little to go on regarding the people who placed them where they could have caused such horrific loss of human life. Police however have distributed 15,000 fliers asking for the public’s help in the investigation, while investigators, armed with photographs of the two deadly pieces of luggage, are traveling on both trains during the hours it is believed the suitcases were left, looking for witnesses who may have seen the culprit(s).
This is not the first time the German railway system has faced a bomb threat. In 2003, a suitcase containing a deadly explosive was left on a platform at the main train station in Dresden. The offender, a sixty-three year old German, later confessed it was part of a plan to extort money from a bank.
In the current investigation, German officials are also referring back to two unsolved bombings in North Rhineland-Westphalia. The first occurred in Cologne in June, 2004, when a nail bomb exploded on a street whose residents were mostly Turks. Twenty-two people were injured.
The second explosion happened six years ago in Dusseldorf near a local train station. Ten Eastern European immigrants, most of them Jewish, were badly injured. A baby also died in its mother’s womb in the attack.
One German terrorism expert has stated that in comparison with the attack on the commuter trains in Madrid in March, 2004, in which 191 people died, the bombs found on the German trains appear to be the work of a single person whose work isn’t as professional.
Nevertheless, Ullrich Schultheis, speaker for German security officials working on the case stated: “We are investigating in all directions and have only begun.”
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen Brown is a columnist for Frontpagemag.com. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23693
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xDuckYouSuckerx
xBannedx


Registered: 05/25/06
Posts: 1,410
Last seen: 17 years, 9 months
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Re: German Train Terror [Re: Luddite]
#5935063 - 08/05/06 04:49 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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A twenty pound propane tank and a few gallons of gas wouldn't have "Destroyed the train". It MAY have destroyed one individual car, but that isn't much propellent at all and neither of those are explosives. It looks like the Jolly Roger Brigade was foiled again.
-------------------- Unions are the bastions of the mediocre. - luvdemshrooms
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
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> and neither of those are explosives
Propane is indeed an explosive. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0022-3727/38/23/017/d5_23_017.pdf
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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xDuckYouSuckerx
xBannedx


Registered: 05/25/06
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Re: German Train Terror [Re: Seuss]
#5935333 - 08/05/06 07:51 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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*high explosive
-------------------- Unions are the bastions of the mediocre. - luvdemshrooms
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
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High explosives, such as Propane-1,2,3-triyl trinitrate. Of course, this isn't pure propane... With a compessed gas, it doesn't even have to be chemically explosive. Read up on bleves.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Meat_Log_Smurf
FumbDuck

Registered: 01/31/03
Posts: 1,144
Loc: BFE
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Wouldn't the whole train pretty much have been fucked up if it was at full speed and one of the cars blew up? All it takes one car to get outta line to wreck the whole train.
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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?



Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
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Re: German Train Terror [Re: Luddite]
#5936323 - 08/06/06 07:01 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
“With the Dortmund bomb, the gas bottle was filled to the brim and the gas concentration too high,” one police expert told the publication. “An explosion can only result when there is also sufficient air in the bottle. It is only dangerous when there is the right gas-air mixture.”
Quite kind of the police to give the bombers tips to help them the next time.
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 11 months
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Yeah, they won't make that mistake again
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