Christians Under Attack

Police arrested a Bosnian man Monday after he tried to enter the U.S. Embassy in Vienna with a backpack containing explosives, nails and Islamic literature, Austrian authorities said.

The suspect was taken into police custody around after he was seen dropping the bag and fleeing on foot, Vienna police spokeswoman Michaela Raz said.

The suspect was described only as a 42-year-old native of Bosnia-Herzegovina who now lives in the province of Lower Austria, which encircles most of the capital. Police said they made the arrest a short distance from the embassy building in a neighborhood where security is tight.

Raz said explosives experts were still examining the contents of the backpack.

"There were a lot of nails in that bag. Had it exploded, it would have had an enormous shrapnel effect," Doris Edelbacher of Austria's federal counterterrorism office told reporters.

She said the explosives resembled hand grenades, but that munitions experts were still working to determine whether the device had been properly rigged to explode.

The suspect spoke broken German and appeared to ramble during an initial interrogation, Edelbacher said.

It was unclear how far he made it into the embassy. Public broadcaster ORF, citing unidentified officials, reported that a metal detector sounded an alarm as the man was passing through security checks and that he fled immediately.

The nature of the Islamic material he allegedly was carrying also was unclear.

It was the second recent terrorism scare in Austria.

Last month, authorities arrested three people all Austrian citizens of Arab origin in their 20s in connection with a video posted online in March that had threatened Austria and Germany with attacks if they did not withdraw their military personnel from Afghanistan.

One of the suspects was released several days later for lack of evidence.

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