Federal prosecutors charged a US soldier suspected of planning to shoot and blow up fellow service members near Fort Hood with possessing an illegal firearm yesterday.

Army Private Naser Jason Abdo, 21, was arrested on Wednesday after police found bomb-making materials and literature in his motel room, along with a copy of Al-Qaeda English-language magazine Inspire.

During an interview with FBI officials, Mr Abdo admitted he planned to build two bombs in his budget hotel room by packing gun powder and shrapnel into pressure cookers he would then detonate at a restaurant popular with soldiers from Fort Hood, a sprawling US Army base in Texas, according to the affidavit.

A query with the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Records found that “there were no firearms, including destructive devices, registered to Naser Jason Abdo,” said a statement by a US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives listed in the affidavit.

Items found in his room included a .40 calibre handgun, ammunition, an Inspire article entitled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom” and bomb-making components – including six bottles of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun shells, shotgun pellets, two clocks, two spools of auto wire, an electric drill and two pressure cookers, court documents said.

The criminal complaint filed against him was unsealed in Waco, Texas, by US Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Mankse. If convicted, Mr Abdo faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.

Attached to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, ­Kentucky, Mr Abdo had sought conscientious objector status to refuse deployment to Afghanistan, saying he could not fight other Muslims.