US arrests suicide bomb suspect in Kansas

The US Justice Department says it's arrested an Islamic State sympathiser who was plotting to carry out a suicide bomb attack on a US military base in Kansas.

John T Booker Jr, 20, is charged with "attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction... attempting to damage property by means of an explosive and one count of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," the Justice Department said.

Booker was arrested on Friday near the Kansas city of Manhattan "as he made his final preparations for his planned assault" on nearby Fort Riley, the US lawyer for Kansas, Barry Grissom, told reporters in Kansas City.

"Unbeknownst to him, the materials that were used to make up this bomb were inert," said Mr Grissom, who added that Booker would appear on Friday in US Federal Court.

"It is alleged that he planned to pull the trigger of the explosives himself so that he would die in the explosion," Mr Grissom said.

"It is alleged that he told another individual that detonating a suicide bomb was his number one aspiration."

Booker, from the Kansas city of Topeka, was questioned by FBI agents a year ago over his "jihad sympathies," according to a report in the Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper at the time.