Two suspects arrested in a Brooklyn apartment were probably "less than a day" away from pulling off a horrific suicide bombing that could have devastated a busy subway station nearby, authorities said.
The plot was foiled when a roommate or co-conspirator tip-ped off authorities.Police shot and wounded Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer and Lafi Khalil during a pre-dawn raid Thursday after one of them apparently made a lunge for an explosive device, authorities said. They both were arrested.
Later, at a hospital, Abu Mezer told investigators that he and his accomplices had planned to use the explosives on the subways and elsewhere in New York, according to a federal complaint filed late Thursday.
The FBI and the New York Police Department issued a statement saying Abu Mezer, 23, and Khalil, 22, were "planning to target U.S. and Jewish interests worldwide."
James Kallstrom, head of the FBI office in New York, told Boston radio station WBZ this morning he believed the subway attack was "less than a day" from being pulled off at the time of the raid.
The Times and Newsday said the plan called for an attack on the busy Atlantic Avenue station, several blocks from the apartment, which includes 10 subway lines and a Long Island Rail Road terminal.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said on "Good Morning America" that two other people were being held for questioning. He didn't elaborate, and FBI spokesman Joseph Vali-quette would not comment today.
Investigators believe the men - along with at least one other accomplice - were planning a suicide bombing or bombings in the city, a federal law enforcement official in Washington told The Associated Press. Published reports today said the bombs lacked timing devices, so they could be set off only by a suicide bomber.
CBS News reported Friday from Tel Aviv that its Palestinian sources say the men arrested in Brooklyn are members of Hamas based in Jordan. That is the group that claimed responsibility for Wednesday's suicide bombings in Jerusalem, which killed 15 people, including two bombers.
CBS said both they and the Jerusalem market bombers are working for Mousa Abu Marzook, the Hamas political leader who lived in Virginia for 15 years before being arrested in 1995, imprisoned as a terrorism suspect and then deported earlier this year.
The United States let Abu Marzook go to Jordan in May after Israel dropped an extradition request, fearing that he would become a martyr for Palestinian extremists if tried and jailed there. CBS said its report could be an embarrassment to the United States, for letting Abu Marzook go, and to Jordan's King Hussein, for offering him refuge.
Police surrounded the apartment building before dawn Thursday and for the next six hours ordered 90 people from the other buildings on the block to leave. They shut down four subway lines, inconveniencing some 300,000 rush-hour commuters.
They opened fire on Abu Mezer and Khalil when at least one of them made a lunge for what appeared to be a bomb switch, Giuliani said.
At Kings County Hospital Center, Abu Mezer told investigators that he helped make the bombs, explained how they could be disarmed and described plans to target the subway system, the complaint said.