Stockholm suicide bomber was ‘minutes away from something catastrophic’

LONDON - The Stockholm suicide bombings suspect, Taimour al-Abdaly, missed causing a massive catastrophe by a matter of minutes, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has said.

Bildt, in an interview with the BBC, said that he did not know the bomber’s intended target, but said that it appeared the attacker was heading toward areas crowded with Christmas shoppers when one of his explosives went off.

“It looks like he was heading into probably the most crowded place in Stockholm at the most crowded time of the year. He was heading into a place where, if he had exploded all the ordnance he had with him - and that was quite substantial - it would have been mass casualties of a sort we haven’t seen in Europe for quite some time,” Bildt said.

“(We were) just minutes and a couple of hundreds of metres away from something catastrophic,” he added.

Bildt also said that Swedish authorities were making an “intensive” effort to work out if Abdaly was acting alone or with accomplices.

The bomber was the only person to die in the attack. Two other people were injured in the blast. (ANI)