Car-bomb glitch saved city from mass casualties

THE suicide bomber who blew himself up amid panicked Christmas shoppers in Stockholm a year ago had also rigged a car bomb but failed to set it off remotely with a walkie-talkie.

New details from the year-long investigation showed a series of technical glitches prevented Taimour Abdulwahab from inflicting mass casualties in one of the Swedish capital’s busiest commercial areas.

The Iraqi-born Swede managed to kill only himself in the attack on 11 December.

Anders Thornberg, deputy head of Sweden’s security service, said only some of the explosives Abudlwahab had been wearing detonated, apparently because of a problem with the trigger.

An unexploded bomb was found in the burned-out wreck of the car he had set on fire about 250 metres from the bomb site. It was hooked up to a walkie-talkie that the suicide bomber was carrying, but the remote-control mechanism failed.

Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding-Qvarnstrom said Abdulwahab might have intended to set off the car bomb as emergency crews arrived to put out the fire, and was perhaps trying to fix a problem with the explosives when they went off.