BOSTON: US President Barack Obama vowed yesterday that the “evil” Boston marathon bombers would be found as investigators focused their efforts on two potential suspects.
“Yes, we will find you, and yes, you will face justice,” Obama told a special service in the city, three days after the two bombs killed three people and injured about 180 in a hail of nails and ball bearings.
“We will find you, we will hold you accountable,” he told a congregation of 2,000 at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross in a special visit to show national solidarity after Monday’s attack. “If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us,” Obama said, then “it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it.”
Obama, who also met relatives of the dead and recovering victims at Massachusetts General Hospital, said Americans had seen “the face of evil” in the attacks.
Obama has vowed a relentless hunt for the attackers and authorities say they want to speak to individuals seen in surveillance camera images around the marathon finish line that was devastated by the pressure cooker bombs.
“There is some video that has raised the question of those that the FBI would like to speak with,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Congressional hearing. But she added that she would not call the “individuals” in the images suspects.
No claim of responsibility and no arrests have been made in connection with the worst attack in the United States since the September 11, 2001 atrocities.
But media reports said authorities would later release images of two men who could have planted the bombs that sprayed nails, ball bearings and other metal fragments into the crowds.
“Authorities have clear video images of two separate suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings carrying black bags at each explosion site and are planning to release the images today,” the Boston Globe said, quoting an official. The images were from surveillance cameras in Boylston Street in Boston where the marathon ended.
A law enforcement official said that investigators have images of at least one potential suspect and are seeking “to locate and identify that individual.” The suspects have not yet been identified though, reports said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has launched a “worldwide” hunt.
The FBI released photographs of the mangled metal remnants of a pressure cooker believed to have been used for one of the bombs. The lid of one pressure cooker was found on the roof of a hotel near the marathon finish line. More than 100 of the injured have left Boston hospitals, but about 10 remain in critical condition. At least 12 people have lost at least one of their legs because of the blast from the bombs, which fired the metal fragments at low level.
AFP
