Bomb Blast, Mystery Balloons Rattle Japanese

The mystery deepened and the fear spread in Japan on Saturday as a bomb exploded at Tokyo’s international airport and 30 mystery balloons descended upon the country.

Since March 20, when 12 people were killed by a poison gas attack on the Tokyo subways, the nation has been shaken by a series of terrorist attempts, although no one has been seriously hurt since the first incident.

There was no indication that Saturday’s incidents were linked to the previous attacks, which police suspect were staged by a doomsday cult known as Aum Supreme Truth.

But their occurrence--as signs mounted that police are about to arrest the cult’s founder, Shoko Asahara, in an operation the media have dubbed “X-Day”--sent a collective shiver through Japan.

“There has been speculation that hard-line cult members may resort to terrorism if their leader is arrested,” Japan’s Kyodo News Service reported Saturday.

There were no casualties in either the bomb blast in a men’s toilet in the airport departure lounge or from the 30 balloons falling to the ground.

They were enough, however, to set off a new round of security measures in a nation where 60,000 police officers are already on red alert at subway stations, bus depots and airports.

In the airport attack, an iron pipe filled with pinball-type metal balls was detonated by a timing device in the toilet at the packed departure check-in area of Narita International Airport, 40 miles east of the capital.

It sprayed the balls through the toilet, which was empty at the time. The balls ripped holes in the walls and ceiling.

The balloon barrage was even more mysterious because there were no markings of any kind on them.

They were 15 feet long when deflated. Attached to the vinyl balloons by rope were five-inch-long plastic tubes containing toy dials with numbers on them and tiny batteries.

Police said they floated to Earth over an eight-hour period in an area from the port city of Yokohama to Tottori prefecture, 320 miles south.