Dozens of FBI agents swooped on a post office in Florida as a nationwide hunt intensifies for the parcel bomber who targeted high-profile critics of Donald Trump.
The bureau deployed additional resources to the state, including sniffer dogs, as the bomb squad homed in on a sprawling facility in Opa-locka, a poor suburb of Miami.
Many of the 10 packages are thought to have been mailed from Florida, a key state in next month’s mid-term elect-ions. The devices, containing timers and batteries, were being examined at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia.
Investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies have joined the hunt. The targets of the mail bombs have included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former vice-president Joe Biden, Robert De Niro and Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Nobody has been hurt so far and none of the devices has gone off.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News:“Some of the packages went through the mail. They originated, some of them, from Florida. am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.”
Investigators have been examining a US Postal Service database of images of mail, which gave clues pointing to Florida.
All the parcels also had the fake return address of the office of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chair, in the town of Sunrise in the same state.
The mail facility in Opa-locka serves South Florida and sits on the corner of an executive airport. Miami-Dade police spokesman Argemis Colome said the force sent sniffer dogs there last night as a “precautionary measure”.
Mail worker Sylvester McKenzie said: “We don’t know who sent the packages or if the person lives close by here in Opa-locka or far away. I don’t feel like we’re safe. What if one of the packages could have exploded at the job and injured so many innocent people?”
Mr Trump has tried to claim the media is responsible for the “anger” infecting America, but others blame his own rhetoric.
He continued to attack the media today, tweeting: “Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of bombs … yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!’”
