Capping off a busy day for the Religion of Peace™, a Moroccan nutball tried to blow up a McDonalds restaurant in Brescia, Italy: Bomber dies in blast at Italian McDonald’s. (Hat tip: Bruce.)

Witnesses said a man, later identified as Moustafa Chaouki, a native of Casablanca, drove his Fiat Tempra into the queue of cars waiting at the restaurant in Brescia, 100km east of Milan, at 10 pm. His car contained four cylinders of kitchen gas, each with a capacity of more than 70 litres.

Police believe he opened the taps of the cylinders, filling the car with gas. Witnesses said he then suddenly opened the driver’s door, and the car detonated into a fireball.

A woman in the car directly behind the Fiat, told the daily, Corriere della Sera: “I had just said to my boyfriend, ‘Don’t you smell something strange?’ Then there was the blast. That man didn’t even try to get out of the car. He stayed there, immobile in his seat, with one leg out of the door.”

About 20 customers were inside the restaurant, and a firefighter told Corriere: “We arrived within three minutes, and it was fortunate that we did because we succeeded in containing the explosion, chilling some of the gas cylinders inside the car.”

Otherwise, the unnamed officer added, the cylinders could have exploded, firing lethal metal fragments through the restaurant windows and possibly igniting other cylinders of carbon dioxide belonging to the restaurant which were close to the burning car.