Fear mounts as serial bomber uses tripwire

AUSTIN, Texas — The hunt for the serial bomber who has been leaving deadly explosives in packages on Austin doorsteps took an even more sinister turn Monday when investigators said the fourth and latest blast was triggered along a street by a nearly invisible tripwire.

Police and federal agents said that suggests a “higher level of sophistication” than they have seen before, and means the carnage is now random, rather than targeted at someone in particular.

“The game went up a little bit — well, it went up a lot yesterday with the tripwire,” Christopher Combs, FBI agent in charge of the bureau’s San Antonio division, said in an interview.

Two people have been killed and four wounded in bombings over a span of less than three weeks.

The latest blast happened Sunday night in southwest Austin’s quiet Travis Country neighborhood, wounding two men in their 20s who were walking in the dark. They suffered what police said were significant injuries and remained hospitalized in stable condition. operation in Syria in 2016, and Erdogan has repeatedly said it will not allow a “terror corridor” along its border — a reference to territories controlled by the Kurdish forces, which Turkey views as terrorists because of their links to Kurdish insurgents fighting inside Turkey.

Emboldened by Sunday’s capture of Afrin, Erdogan went even further on Monday, asserting that Turkish troops and allied Syrian forces would press eastward, targeting territory that includes Kobani, a town that has become a symbol of the fight against the Islamic State militants, as well as Qamishli, where the Syrian government controls an airport and a security zone.