At least 3 dead after Boston Marathon bombing

The number of deaths following the Patriots’ Day bombing of the Boston Marathon has risen to three. There are more than 100 are injured, several of them listed as critical.

The dead include an eight-year-old boy, and at least six other children are among those hospitalised.

The New York Times reports that the FBI and senior police officers are already pointing out that the setting and timing might point to American right-wing causes as it was the start of a significant week for some radical American anti-government groups. April 15 is the deadline for returning tax forms and it is also Patriot’s Day. Gun control proposals can arouse reactions from America’s most dangerous fringes. Bombs in rubbish bins scattering deadly ball bearings were a hallmark of the IRA, and Boston has always been the home of American IRA sympathisers.

Surgeons confirmed last night that many of the wounded had been blasted by ball-bearings and air-gun pellets pointing towards the evidence that the two bombs that had exploded had been packed with shrapnel. Clues point as much towards a resurgence of ‘domestic’ terrorism as to an attack sponsored by al-Qaeda or Muslim radicals.

The technique for building a ball bearing bomb in a backpack is readily available on-line.

The first bomb went off at 2.57 pm opposite the main grandstand by the finish line near Boston’s central Foley Square. The second about 100 yards away some 12 seconds later. They were timed to cause the maximum impact among the marathon’s 23,000 runners and the many spectators.

 There were head injuries, but most were to the lower limbs. With roads blocked to traffic for the race, police, firemen and volunteers triaged and carried away victims in wheelchairs and on stretchers that were at hand for exhausted runners.

The race, which is the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon and has a total of 27,000 runners. There were 374 from the UK but none were injured. At the moment the Spanish Embassy has announced that there were no Spanish citizens involved or injured.