Terror Attack? 11 dead after wrong-way car crashes in Florida and California

Brendan O'BrienReuters

6:25 p.m. CST, February 9, 2014

(Reuters) - Eleven people died early Sunday in two highway collisions, one in Florida and one in California, caused by drivers going the wrong way, authorities said.

Five people died in the Florida collision and six were killed in California, and investigation continued into whether drugs or alcohol were factors in the crashes.

A Ford Expedition SUV traveling south on northbound Interstate 275 in Tampa, Florida, collided head-on with a Hyundai Sonata just after 2 a.m., killing the SUV driver and all four people in the other car, according to a Florida Highway Patrol news release.

The SUV became engulfed in flames, the patrol report said. The other vehicle was also damaged by fire. The driver and all three passengers in the car were members of the Sigma Beta Rho fraternity at the University of South Florida in Tampa, the patrol said.

From The Investigative Project on Terrorism

The second edition of Inspire features articles by at least three American writers - cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, considered one of the movement's leading recruiters, al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn and Samir Khan, who writes of his decision to leave North Carolina for Yemen to aid the cause.

But the most disturbing sections come from someone identified as Yahya Ibrahim. In separate articles, he suggests ideas for terrorist attacks and offers advice on how to wage jihad without generating scrutiny from law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

The graphic for the article "The Ultimate Mowing Machine" is taken from a Ford F-150 advertisement showing a truck splashing through puddles as lightning strikes in the background. With the right tools and a little effort, the truck can be turned into a killing machine from a Wes Craven horror film.

"The idea is to use a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah," Ibrahim writes. "Maximum carnage" can be created by adding steel blades to the front grill of the truck and driving it at high speed into a crowd of pedestrians. The attacker can bring a gun to "finish off your work if your vehicle gets grounded during the attack."

Countries that support Israel or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be targets. However, it's a suicide mission, so anyone carrying it out should be sure to leave behind a note explaining the motivation:

"You keep fighting until you achieve martyrdom. You start out your day in this world, and by the end of it, you are with Allah."

As outrageous as the idea seems, it's not that far removed from a 2006 attack at the University of North Carolina. An Iranian student named Mohammed Taheri-Azarinjured nine people when he drove an SUV into a crowd of students leaving class. In a letter explaining his motivation, Taheri-Azar wrote that he had "no desire to amass the impermanent and temporary fame and material wealth this world has to offer."

That's the same message hammered home in the latest issue of Inspire, said Abdur-Rahman Mohamed, a convert to Islam who spent years believing and preaching the same radical ideology. After an epiphany, he now combats Islamist extremism.