Hyderabad: The arrested ISIS sympathisers were not only trying to make a bomb but some sort of “chemical weapon” too that would release toxic gases. According to sources in the police department, 5- 6 kg of urea nitrate was kept ready by the terror suspects to prepare improvised explosive devices.
A bomb-defusing expert of the TS police said, “Ibrahim Yazdani, his brother Ilyas and Fahad used urea (ammonium nitrate) and nitric acid to prepare urea nitrate in the storeroom of their house in Chandrayana-gutta. The urea nitrate was ready for use and during an explosion, it would have produced toxic fumes like oxides of nitrogen which are harmful to humans. Within an area of 50 metres to 100 metres radius, people who inhale them will become unconscious. So they are chemical weapons.”
Sources in the Central Forensic Science Laboratory said they are yet to receive the samples from NIA. Preliminary examinations by state police experts have confirmed it as urea nitrate and a white chemical found in bottles as nitric acid and another chemical as hydrogen peroxide, used to make triacetone triperoxide or TATP, the ingredient for making bombs.
An investigating official said, “They had downloaded online tutorials from the Net and from YouTube links sent by IS handler Shafi Armar. Urea nitrate is relatively stable and ready to be used to construct an IED. NIA and TS police averted a major terror strike.”
ISIS men had made urea nitrate
An official investigating the arrested ISIS suspects said there were two types of ingredients, one to make TATP, which was used in Brussels and Paris attacks, and the other one is similar to that used in the first attack on the World Trade Centre in NY. “In this type of bombs even the lethal cyanide gas can be used.”
“The accused used to melt the Urea. gas stoves, masks, gloves and utensils used by them indicate that they made Urea Nitrate. It can be easily ignited and it generates toxic oxides of nitrogen,” the bomb expert of TS police said.
Alert for Karimnagar
The Intelligence Bureau has put out an alert stating that sleeper cells were located in Karimnagar. This follows an IB alert that 90 trained terrorists from Bangladesh and Afghanistan had sneaked into India. The police has laun-ched a counter intelligence operation in the city and alerted the Karimnagar police.
