Three letter bombs found in the United Kingdom.

Two of the three letter bombs. The top one managed to ignite. NBC News/Sky News. 

Three letter bombs have been sent to two airports and a rail station in the United Kingdom. NBC News. The three letters were more incendiary devices than explosives and were capable of starting a fire if opened. Two of the packages were found without incident but the third started on fire when opened. Nobody was injured in the attack. The packages appear to have Irish postage. No one has taken credit for the attack and the incident is under investigation. 

My Comment:

It seems that letter bombs are becoming more common. Most of the time these bombs do little or nothing as most people are wise enough to not open strange packages, and even when they do they often fail to explode or harm anyone. 

That being said, these kinds of attacks do have an oversize impact. A letter bomb isn't the most deadly thing but it forces a huge response from authorities. It also makes it scary to do something as normal as opening your mail. 

I do think it's kind of odd that these devices were designed to ignite, and not explode. Though these devices could start a fire which could get out of control under the right situations, they don't seem like the kind of device that could kill someone easily. That isn't to downplay the threat, they were clearly dangerous. But they could have been a lot more dangerous. 

Nobody has claimed these bombs. The way I see it there are three possibilities. The most obvious is some kind of Islamic terrorist. They have obviously carried out a lot of terror attacks, including in the UK, but this doesn't seem like their style. They tend to go with more spectacular attacks and always take credit for them. 

Another option is some kind of attack from the IRA or related groups. I confess to not having much knowledge on the Troubles and the current status of the IRA and other groups like them, but what little I do know does make them a more plausible perpetrator than Muslim terrorists. They tend to be less about maximum casualties and more about making a point and this seems like that kind of attack. 

Most likely though is some kind of lone wolf attacker. That tends to be the case for most of these letter bomb/mail attack incidents. For example, the most famous mail attacker was Ted Kaczynski  and he worked alone. My guess is that this attack is more of the same. 

Either way, though this attack wasn't much of an attack, it was still dangerous. I am hoping that the catch the person responsible, regardless of his affiliation, as soon as possible.