Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton on Sunday said the bombing of a suburban mosque one day earlier was “an act of terrorism.”
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dayton and several other officials visited the mosque on Sunday, one day after someone threw a homemade explosive device through a window.
“What a terrible, dastardly, cowardly act was committed. Anything I can do to put a stop to it, I would gladly do.” Dayton said, calling it a hate crime. The FBI said Saturday that an improvised explosive device was responsible for the blast at Bloomington’s Dar Al Farooq Community Center.
No one was injured, but a room belonging to a imam was reportedly damaged. The executive director of the Islamic center, Mohamed Omar, said it might have been much worse, the Star Tribune reported, saying that the imam running a few minutes late may have saved his life.
Omar added that a member of the congregation saw a pickup truck speeding away from the building’s parking lot just after the blast.
He told the Star Tribune on Sunday the perpetrator may have known which window was the imam’s, who missed the blast by only a few minutes.
Anti-Muslim incidents have risen sharply in the United States over the past year, according to a review by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Minneapolis-area bomber.
Be the first to comment