US authorities suspect domestic suicide bomber triggered Nashville explosion

WASHINGTON

: No one was killed in the mysterious vehicular bombing in

Downtown Nashville

on Christmas morning except the perpetrator. But Americans are now learning of a chilling new development: it was conducted by a domestic suicide bomber whose motives are still unknown. If confirmed, it would

America

's first home-grown suicide bomber -- a species hitherto thought to have proliferated only in distant countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Iraq.


Law enforcement authorities who have traced the Recreational Vehicle (RV) that was used to conduct the bombing to a town outside Nashville believe it belonged to a 63-year old man named Anthony Quinn Warner. They are trying to confirm by DNA analysis if the human remains found on the scene is his. Three people were injured in the explosion triggered off in the vehicle, but no one else died, in part because of a warning broadcast from the

van

asking people in the vicinity to evacuate because of an imminent explosion.

Six officers who hustled people to safety on hearing the warning being played from the RV are being hailed as heroes.

At a press conference, police described how the RV, which was covered in cameras, played an ominous warning about the impending explosion, with a countdown followed by the song 'Downtown' by Petula Clark in the minutes before the blast. Authorities believe the bomber may have targeted an AT&T transmission center nearby and they are investigating claims and tips that he harbored paranoia about Americans being spied on through 5G technology, which would explain targeting the AT&T building, whose assets suffered the most damage in the explosion.

The 63-year-old Warner was described as an oddball by neighbors cited in the local media. According to one report, he transferred two homes he owned to a 29-year-old woman from California. The woman declined to tell the press how she knew Warner.

If indeed it is confirmed the attack came from a suicide bomber, it will introduce a new element in the domestic terrorism scenario in the US that authorities have been warning for some months has been heating up. Scores of armed militias, mostly of white supremacist groups, have been active across the US in recent months.

Although the US was the target of the single biggest terrorist attack in history on 9/11, one has to go back to 1995 for its biggest terror attack conducted by domestic extremists.

That was when a man named Timothy Mcveigh triggered an explosion from a uhaul truck loaded with explosives, destroying a federal building and killing168 people in Oklahoma City. McVeigh was sentenced to death by lethal injection and was subsequently executed.