Bomb Found On MLK Parade Route

A backpack bomb capable of causing multiple casualties was found along the route of Monday's Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, the FBI says. City workers discovered the bomb before the parade and it was neutralized by the city's explosives disposal unit. Authorities say the bomb was placed on a bench in front of a brick wall, a position apparently intended to direct the blast towards marchers on the street.

"It definitely was, by all early analysis, a viable device that was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties,” an FBI spokesman tells the Spokesman-Review. “Clearly, the timing and placement of a device—secreted in a backpack—with the Martin Luther King parade is not coincidental. We are doing everything humanly possible to identify the individuals or individual who constructed and placed this device.” The bomb, he added, "falls directly in the realm and sphere of domestic terrorism." (More Martin Luther King Jr. stories.)