The mail will go through

Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. — Rural carriers planned to deliver mail as scheduled today despite the discovery of 14 mailbox pipe bombs across the Midwest in recent days, authorities said Sunday.

But postal officials warned customers that the doors of roadside mailboxes must be taped or otherwise kept open. Affected are customers in Nebraska, Iowa and northwest Illinois.

"We are instructing our carriers not to deliver to any closed receptacles," Mike Matuzek, U.S. Postal Service district manager for Nebraska and southwest Iowa, said Sunday.

Locked mailboxes, like those at apartment complexes and neighborhood delivery units, will have normal delivery, he said.

Six people were injured by explosions in Illinois and Iowa on Friday. None of the six bombs found Saturday in rural areas of Nebraska went off. They were later detonated harmlessly by authorities.

An 18-year-old man was arrested in St. Paul on Sunday night after at least one of two suspicious devices found in mailboxes in Nebraska on Sunday was determined to be a prank, the U.S. Postal Service said.

Roger Humphries, a postal service spokesman, declined to describe the latest devices. The Postal Service doesn’t want to deal with any more hoaxes, he said.

"I hope whoever is responsible would respond," said Thayer County Sheriff David Lee, whose department received a call on one bomb found in a rural mailbox near Davenport on Saturday.

An anti-government note found with the bombs warned of more "attention getters," and federal authorities described the bombs as an act of domestic terrorism.

The FBI planned to post a letter on the Internet that had been found with some of the devices on its Web site — www.fbi.gov — and the postal service Web site at www.usps.com.