Explosions in Exeter

A man walked into a restaurant in the middle of Exeter today and tried to set off a bomb.

I think that we can rule out football hooliganism because nothing anymore disastrous than normal has been happening to Exeter City recently. Likewise some weird prankster would most likely have just stuck his head around the door to lob in a firecracker then legged it. Detonating in a locked toilet is not a good practical joke since the only person to get laughed at would be you. So it could have been an attempted terrorist attack, so if that was the case what do we know?

They where after mass casualties. They chose a chose a crowded restaurant as the target.

They where after civilian casualties. Exeter has a large army barracks and the Royal Marine training base just down the road. They chose not to go after these and went for a specifically civilian target.

The restaurant was not part of a particularly big chain and they chose not to go after any of the many chain coffee shops.

The restaurant was not a 'gay' one or part of any gay district (even if the new Princesshay is rather nice) nor is it associated with large numbers of ethnic minorities, not that anywhere in Devon has many ethnic minorities other than Eastern Europeans.

There was no warning.

It was very probably a suicide attack, since when it went off they where still holding it.

They where incompetent, because only ended up injuring themselves.

If this is terrorism then it seems to rule out the IRA, Animal Rights activists, anti-globalisation nuts (who to be fair don't normally go in for anything more than the odd riot), and homophobic Neo-NAZIs. There is only one group left that has recently committed any acts of terrorism, and it certainly fits with their Modus Operendi of incompetent suicide attacks, but there aren't that many Muslims in Exeter either. If this was Islamic terrorism then confirmation will come from how studiously any mention of the M word or the I word or anything else that would link the bomber to Islam is avoided in the media.

UPDATE

Yep, Muslim. Well at least some of the media mentioned it, I wonder how long until the BBC does.

UPDATE

I was wrong. This time the BBC seems to be rather less hesitant about mentioning that he was a Muslim convert.