Melbourne attacker: truck rigged to explode

Australian police said yesterday a man who fatally stabbed another and injured two in what they described as a terrorist attack in central Melbourne had also planned to set off an explosion.

Hassain Khalif Shire Ali, 30, got out of a pickup vehicle, which then caught fire, and stabbed three men, one of whom died at the scene on Friday. The attack horrified hundreds of onlookers during the afternoon rush hour in Australia’s secondbiggest city.

Victoria state Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said Shire Ali, who was shot by police and died in hospital, had also planned for his vehicle to explode, but barbecue gas cylinders in the back of his pickup failed to ignite.

“It looks like he’s attempted to ignite a fire in the car, we believe at this stage with a view to igniting those canisters with some sort of explosion, but that didn’t eventuate,” Ashton told Australia’s Channel 9 TV network.

Ashton said Shire Ali, who moved to Australia from Somalia in the 1990s, was known to police and the federal intelligence authority ASIO partly because his brother Ali Khalif Shire Ali faced court this year in Melbourne accused another attack.

“He’s someone that was known to us,” Ashton said. “But he wasn’t someone we were actively monitoring to that level.”

Ashton said Shire Ali had a criminal history for cannabis use, theft and driving offences.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released through its Aamaq media arm, but provided no evidence.

Police and civilians had tried unsuccessfully to subdue Shire Ali during Friday’s attack, before police shot him in the chest.

A man aged 74, who had been stabbed in the face, died at the scene. The Herald Sun named him as Melbourne cafe owner Sisto Malaspina, although police had not confirmed that. Two other men, aged 26 and 58, are in a hospital with what police describe as non-life threatening injuries.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp said police were searching two Melbourne properties yesterday in relation to the attack. Ashton said, however, that police did not believe there were any ongoing threats to the public. of plotting