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| Explosions outside British Consulate in Manhattan |
| 2005-05-05 |
| Two small makeshift grenades exploded outside the British Consulate early Thursday, Election Day in England, causing slight damage to the building but injuring no one, officials said. The blasts happened at 3:50 a.m. The grenades had been placed inside a cement flower box outside the front door of the midtown Manhattan building that houses the consulate, police spokesman Noel Waters said. After piecing together the shrapnel, police determined the devices were toy grenades that had been filled with gunpowder. Officers estimated that one was the size of a pineapple; the other the size of a lemon. The blasts shattered a panel of glass in the building's front door and ripped a one-foot chunk from the planter. The department's bomb squad was at the scene and streets were closed in the area. In London, Britain's Foreign Office (search) said there were no provisions for Britons to vote at overseas consulates. No further information was immediately available, the spokesman said. Calls to the British Embassy in Washington went unanswered early Thursday morning. Britain's national elections have been dominated by anger with Prime Minister Tony Blair's (search) support for the Iraq war. They're bringing it home here, folks ... and it's not clear to me whether this came from the jihadis or the LLL. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #25 Fox: Eric Van Schijndel, is a low-level employee at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and is said to have been lingering near the building after the blasts. It's unclear whether Van Schijndel is a suspect. The man -- who lives near the building -- was detained after he refused police orders to leave the crime scene, law enforcement officials told the AP |
| Posted by: anon 2005-05-05 18:21 |
| #24 Probably one of those Critical Mass-holes |
| Posted by: growler 2005-05-05 17:43 |
| #23 Police were examining videotape from security cameras that appeared to show a cyclist lighting and then throwing the grenades toward the building before fleeing the scene, law enforcement sources said. Riding a Cycle Of Violence, how environmentally correct of them. |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-05-05 4:51:01 PM |
| #22 Hah, What did I tell you (See Post #3). Deomcratic Underground is already blaming Bush |
| Posted by: JackAssFestival 2005-05-05 16:29 |
| #21 For LLL, the grenades would have to be pink. I guess they were blue, then. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-05 16:10 |
| #20 Curious. From the Fox story: The man, Eric Van Schijndel, is a low-level employee at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Police said, however, that the man was not considered a suspect. Someone involved in UNMOVIC? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-05-05 14:30 |
| #19 Sounds like the Kofi theory was closer than we thought. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-05-05 14:27 |
| #18 Story may take a stranger twist... U.N. worker being questioned |
| Posted by: Elliot Swan 2005-05-05 13:35 |
| #17 FBI and police were questioning a United Nations employee today after two makeshift grenades exploded outside a building housing the British Consulate. The FBI and police were questioning a United Nations employee from the Netherlands who was found loitering near the building shortly after the explosion, law enforcement sources said. The sources would not say whether or not the man was a suspect. |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-05-05 1:34:30 PM |
| #16 S: OTOH 9/11 was hours before the main mass of folks showed up. Most of Wall Street is in by 8 a.m. The reason more did not die is because the high floors were hit, and most of the second building was evacuated after the first was hit. The other thing is that terrorists don't control airline schedules or the location of takeoffs and departures. They went with a place where they could get through security easily. The timetable for the attacks flowed from there. If they had buzzed NYC waiting for the buildings to fill up completely, someone might have gotten suspicious, meaning that NORAD might have had a chance at shooting them down. The other thing is that loitering around reduces the amount of gas in the planes, meaning that there's less propellant left to fuel the fire. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-05-05 11:06 |
| #15 It's not necessarily the Brits this person was after; that building does have other foreign offices. However, I do imagine it's some nutter who wanted to make a ''statement'' about the election. That said, that entire neighborhood is littered with embassies, consulates, foreign dignitaries, etc. Many years ago I worked in a building a couple blocks south of where this happened. My company shared half a floor with some Middle Eastern embassy group, and the building itself had many foreign groups. Bomb threats were a common occurence. This was before 9/11, and they were not really taken seriously. Since then, security in those sorts of buildings has been tightened incredibly. I wouldn't worry too much about this event. |
| Posted by: growler 2005-05-05 10:55 |
| #14 What the explosions lacked in yield, the MSM made up with hype. The MSM is the best friend these amateur nutjobs have. Without the MSM, the leetle nutjobs would have nuhtink, and this would not be a story. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-05-05 10:51 |
| #13 I'd start looking for a white pu/van. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-05 10:38 |
| #12 ZF: OTOH 9/11 was hours before the main mass of folks showed up. |
| Posted by: someone 2005-05-05 10:31 |
| #11 I'm with Howard too , although I deny all rumours that I have actually been to Ilkeston :) (cross thread joke) |
| Posted by: MacNails 2005-05-05 10:28 |
| #10 I'm guessing LLL. The jihadis would have taken down the building. There's something impotent and symbolic about filling a toy grenade with powder. The LLL is all about impotent symbolism. They probably used a toy grenade to make a statement about how we treat war like a game, or how we indoctrinate our kids to be warriors, or some other faggy half-ass rationale. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-05-05 10:00 |
| #9 I'm with Howard, but by the time the MSM gets doen with it, it'll be an extreme right wing graduate of Columbine High with ties to Timothy McVeigh and the Aryan Nation. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-05-05 09:40 |
| #8 This doesn't appear to be a Muslim terror attack - it was carried out in the small hours of the morning, when no one was around. If the attacker had wanted to hurt people, he would have put these items in brown paper bags (like the ones held by tens of thousands of coffee drinkers) and inserted them in the garbage cans at Grand Central Station. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-05-05 09:36 |
| #7 Pretty close to the U.N. also. Kofi needs some newsworthy distraction and it seems to me that considering this was ''amatuerish'' type IED this sort of fits with him working late on his alibi and walking past an obvious target (British flower pot). Nothing that comes out of this will surprise me! |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2005-05-05 09:18 |
| #6 Reuters: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday police had no indication who was responsible for two blasts at the British Consulate that came on the same day as a general election in Britain. ''It is true the British Consulate is in that building but I don't think anybody should jump to conclusions,'' Bloomberg told reporters at the scene in midtown Manhattan. ''We do not at this point have any idea who did it or a motive,'' Bloomberg said, adding that there had been no warning call before the blast or any call claiming responsibility. True enough. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-05-05 09:01 |
| #5 My money is on LLL who are pissed off about the last election here (how could Bush WIN? We had hitler puppets!) and are now looking to take their anger out on Blair because the election is an easy excuse to play with the toys they've been given by their aging hippie parents. |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2005-05-05 9:00:26 AM |
| #4 My money is on the LLL. If it were the IRA or anyone else, they wouldn't have used such a primitive device or set ti to explode when no one was around. LLL just testing the waters of what they can get away with. Perhaps hoping we knee-jerk blame the Al-Quacker people. |
| Posted by: 98Zulu 2005-05-05 08:15 |
| #3 My fellow Rantburgers Do not assume it's Jihadis, Do not assume its LLLs. For all we know, it could be a nut like Eric Rudolph. We should all condemn it no matter who did it. We do know 2 things: Wackos on the left will find a way to blame Bush, and it will only be a matter of time before someone will blame the Joooos. |
| Posted by: JackAssFestival 2005-05-05 08:10 |
| #2 Aye, the Provos are getting their shorts knotted because the govt had the audacity to charge someone over the Omagh atrocity and cos the Yanks aren't paying up any more... Doubtful. I'll go lone nutter for ten. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2005-05-05 08:09 |
| #1 Don't forget the IRA! |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-05-05 08:04 |