One of the two powerful bombs mailed from Yemen and discovered in two cargo planes was addressed to a small LGBT synagogue on Chicago's North Side, federal agents tell the Chicago Tribune.
"Or Chadash has for seven years shared space on North Sheridan Road with another Jewish congregation, the Emanuel Congregation. The squat brick building yards from Lake Michigan also is home to a day school for about 140 children between kindergarten and seventh grade. Or Chadash leaders said they learned that their group was an intended recipient of one of the Yemen packages from Emanuel's Rabbi Michael Zedek.
"'It was just a surprise,' said Rabbi Larry Edwards of Or Chadash. 'When I was first hearing news (about the packages), I assumed there were probably bigger targets. We're a small congregation. Either we were selected at random or it's because we're a mostly gay congregation.' ... Until now, Or Chadash had never received threats of violence, Edwards said."
Even more bizarre: The synagogue's website has recently been repeatedly accessed from computers in Egypt, Rabbi Michael Zedek tells the Sun-Times. "What I was told this morning by the person who keeps our website current is that when she was checking to see how many hits we'd been getting recently, and this is before what occurred on Friday, to her surprise we had 83 hits from an address in Cairo, Egypt. It does assume a greater interest in light of what happened.''
Counter-terrorism officials believe the bombs are the work of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Federal agents are headed to Yemen to monitor cargo security practices, the AP reports. The U.S. Postal Service is temporarily suspending acceptance of inbound mail from Yemen, reports the Washington Post. And Yemeni security forces have "arrested an undisclosed number of people" said to have information regarding the US-bound packages.
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