About the bombs
The “pressure cooker” bombs used in Boston have been frequently used in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, in recent years they have also shown up in plots in the U.S. and France.
Al-Qaeda affiliates have provided training and manuals on how to build such devices.
RECENT CONTAINER BOMBS
February 2013: A bomb hidden in a pressure cooker explodes inside a restaurant in northern Afghanistan, killing five people.
October 2012: French police find bomb-making materials including a pressure cooker in an underground parking lot near Paris.
May 2012: U.S. jurors hear that explosives experts had found a pressure cooker containing smokeless gunpowder and other material in the Texas motel room of a soldier accused of planning to blow up Fort Hood military troops and other personnel.
May 2010: One of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, according to a joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence report.
March 2010: Suspected militants attack the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision in northwestern Pakistan, killing six Pakistani employees. Officials say the attackers remotely detonated a pressure- cooker bomb.
March 2006: A series of bombings killS 20 people in India. One bomb — at a temple in the northern city of Varanasi where five people died — was placed in a pressure cooker and detonated by a timing device.
December 2004: Ten accused Islamic militants are convicted for their roles in a plot to blow up a Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve 2000. Authorities say the group had planned to blow up containers packed with explosives, a technique they allegedly learned in Afghan camps.
August 2002: Explosives packed in a pressure cooker shake a shopping mall in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal. Shops are damaged but there are no casualties.
