MILNET: World Trade Center Bombing
POLICE SAY WORLD TRADE BOMB PLANTED ON PARKING GARAGE RAMP - NEW YORK (MARCH 3) UPI - Police investigators have located "ground zero" of the bomb that ripped through the base of the World Trade Center - a ramp of a parking garage directly beneath the Vista Hotel.
Lt. Walter Boser, head of the police department's bomb squad, said Wednesday investigators have determined the "seat" of the explosion to be on a ramp leading to the B2 parking level, two floors below street level and directly beneath the hotel.
The Vista Hotel is at the foot of the south tower, which bore the brunt of the deadly blast. Five people are known to have died in Friday's lunchtime explosion and 1,042 were injured. The blast rocked the foundation of the center's 110-story twin towers, the city's tallest buildings. But Bosner and other law enforcement officials refused to speculate further on what finding where the bomb went off tells investigators looking for clues as to the bombers' method and identities.
"I don't know what happened on the ramp," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Heat from the explosion melted the paint off scores of cars parked in the garage, and its force peeled back walls "like petals of a flower," Boser said.
"I know I'm safe if I say it was in excess of several hundred pounds" of explosives, Boser said. "There's no one I know that could walk in with that undetected."
The restaurant was empty at the time, and the subway station was not as congested as it would have been if the bomb had gone off at rush hour, factors that actually limited the number of dead and injured, Boser said. The lieutenant showed slides of the devastation caused by the bomb to reporters at what has become a daily briefing by law enforcement authorities. The pictures showed the wreckage of burned and shredded cars, ripped steel and chunks of exposed concrete, exposed pipes and live utility cables lining the perimeter of a gaping crater.
Bosner said the explosion caused "a tremendous release of energy, with not a single place to go because it was all closed in."
"That's why it did such damage," he said.
Newsday and the New York Post reported Wednesday that authorities believe the bombers drove into the underground parking garage in two vehicles, both possibly vans, transferred the explosives to one vehicle and then drove out in the other. But Kelly said Wednesday such reports were based on "wild speculation." Newsday and the Daily News said the odor of the decaying remains of one or more of the bombers could be smelled coming from the rubble. But Fox discounted the reports.
"We have no reason to believe the bodies of the bombers are at the bottom of the crater," he said. "It's entirely possible, but there's nothing to indicate that."
One person remained missing. Wilfredo Mercado, a 37-year-old
restaurant buyer last seen unloading supplies in the underground parking garage level where the bomb went off, was believed to have been buried by debris. Fox and Kelly said the first of the 63 calls claiming responsibility for the bomb, which came in more than an hour afterwards and claimed to be from Serbian nationalists, was considered more "credible" than the others.
"If you have to say one of the 63 is more credible, I suppose that one is more credible. I hesitate to even use that term, though," Fox said, adding that the agency had no evidence to "zero in" on any particular terrorist group.
"It was the first one after the blast and I believe the language used there was, 'This was no accident,"' Fox said of the first call.
Initial media reports attributed the blast to an underground transformer explosion or a subway mishap.
But, Fox added, "To really have credibility...I think the call had to come in any time just before the blast."
Kelly refused to discuss the nature of subsequent calls, saying information on the first phone call leaked out. "We think it undermines the investigation to get into specifics of additional phone calls." The city has placed a $200,000 bounty on the bombers - the largest such reward in city history. The bombing has brought increased security concerns throughout the city, as police report receiving hundreds of bomb threats since Friday. Several buildings have been evacuated as a precaution.
While no one has taken responsibility for the bombing, one internationally known criminal has denied having anything to do with it.
Wednesday, The New York Times quoted fugitive Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, as saying in faxed written statements dated Feb. 26, the day of the bombing, that he had "no role in this attack."
"They can take me off the list, because if I had done it, I would be saying why and I would be saying what I want," Escobar said.
The twin towers were not expected to reopen until emergency and fire alarm systems were repaired and heat and air conditioning restored. City officials estimate the first week after the explosion could cost the city nearly $700 million in losses, with the second week expected to add another $195 million.
Transmitted: 93-03-03 20:11:00 EST
POST AUTHORITY SAYS WORLD TRADE CENTER TO CLOSE FOR A MONTH, REWARD OFFERED NEW YORK (MARCH 3) DPA - The World Trade Center, hit by a serious bomb blast last Friday, is to remain shut for at least a month, spokesmen for the Port Authority of New York, which owns the 110-storey building, said Wednesday.
The spokesmen did hold out any hope that the 50,000-odd employees with jobs at the Center could return to the building later in the week, saying that the six-floor-deep foundations, badly damaged in the blast, would have to be carefully strengthened Experts were preparing to check to what extent the steel structure of the Center's twin towers had been affected by the explosion and what could be done to stabilise them if need be. The continuing disruption is causing increasing financial problems for the 350 firms operating in the world's second tallest building. They are being forced to work from emergency accomodation.
Friday's explosion in the parking area below the buildings killed five people. The blast and its effects injured more than 1,000 others. Authorities believe a bomb was placed in a car in the building's parking area, but no suspect has been pinpointe Some 50 calls accepting responsibility for the outrage have been made, with one, a call by a man saying he planted the bomb for the "Serbian Freedom Front" being taken as the most plausible.
The leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, taking part at the New York peace talks on Bosnia's future, said however in an open letter to Americans Tuesday that opponents of Serbia could have planted the device to blame the Serbs and whip up f eelings against them. He wrote it could be the bomber's tactic to persuade the United States to intervene militarily in Bosnia.
Officials said they have found new pieces of evidence in the bombing, including a new videotape of the underground parking lot and fragments of a van that could have been involved in the attack.