Associated Press
July 2, 2010
Just one day after violence rocked the capitol in the attack on the Homeland Security offices Washington D.C. is rocked by a second day of violence. An explosion from a suicide bomber just outside the Pentagon has claimed the lives of Homeland Security Secretary Evertt Hicks and Air Force General Sebastian Curtis Autumn.
Hicks and Autumn were en-route to the Pentagon to attend a security council meeting set to discuss the status of overseas counter-terrorism operations.
According to sources within DHS, there was a two block blackout of electronic devices just prior to the attack. Street surveillance cameras, traffic lights and entire buildings were shut down in the moments prior to the explosion.
Eye-witnesses who saw the blast claim that a short, masked figure darted out into the street from between two parked cars and threw themselves in the oncoming path of the car transporting Hicks and Autumn. The resulting explosion tore the vehicle apart and sent shrapnel flying into neighboring buildings. Remarkably, no bystanders suffered serious injuries from the attack.
What seems to be the subject of most interest, is that the suicide bomber survived the attack. Reports claim that the attacker rose up from the fiery wreckage and, as one eye witness described, "heal herself." The eye witness accounts indicate that the attacker was female, and proceeded to move through the wreckage of the car in what is speculated as confirmation of kill before fleeing the scene.
Authorities were unable to find the suspected bomber by the time they arrived. DNA evidence from the attack is currently being investigated, and Operations Director Matthew Parkman has been instated as interim secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of Hicks' death.
DHS is claiming that the evolved terrorist group Messiah is responsible for this attack.