An explosion from an apparent attack Saturday damaged an Islamic center in the Midwestern state of Minnesota. No injuries were reported.
The blast occurred around 5:05 a.m. local time as about 20 people were inside the mosque for morning prayers. Officials did not officially establish the cause of the blast, but the manager of the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington called it an attack and said he suspected a man spotted outside the mosque at the time of the explosion might be involved.
Speaking to VOA Somali, Mohamed Omar, executive director of the center, said “a congregant saw a man driving a pickup truck, then heard a sound of a banging car door, before smoke came out and a huge explosion followed.”
“The worshipper saw the man in a truck whom we suspect was behind the attack,” Omar said. A device “was hurled into the window of the main office where the imam of the mosque sits,” and the suspect sped out of the mosque’s parking lot just after the blast, he said.
Omar said worshippers at the mosque were shaken by the explosion, but no one was injured.
A VOA reporter who went to the mosque reported that Bloomington police had cordoned off the entire area with yellow police tape and that fire damage was visible on the building.
Omar said that he did not know why his mosque had been targeted, but that the center has received threatening, anti-Islam and hateful phone calls and emails in the past.
“Our center is one of the Islamic centers that have been receiving threatening calls in the past, but I do not know another reason that can make us a target,” he said.
Mosque leaders were to hold an afternoon news conference to discuss the attack and measures to take, including increasing security at the mosque and asking volunteers to join.
Bloomington police tweeted that the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting in the investigation.
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