Detectives were combing Queens storage facilities on Monday for stockpiled explosive chemicals that Al Qaeda terror thugs planned to use to bomb New York, sources told the NY Daily News.

At the same time, the Daily News has learned that prime terror suspect Najibullah Zazi has confessed he was a jihadist bent on murderous mayhem, the sources said.

NYPD investigators, in coordination with the FBI, hit chemical and fertilizer companies looking for customers who bought bulk and paid cash – and they were also showing up at storage centers in Long Island City.

Investigators believe they were going to use the units to mix chemicals for explosives.

The Department of Homeland Security at the same time has issued a nationwide bulletin asking cops to look at storage facilities.

“Operation Nexus” took on an extra urgency after raids on Queens apartments Zazi visited turned up knapsacks and cell phones. The exact targets are not known, but the find raised the specter of simultaneous blasts like the 2004 attack that killed 191 commuters in Spain.

ABC News reported that investigators believe that there were three teams of four terrorists involved in the planning.

A senior counterterror official told The News, however, that nobody knows for sure who else is out there – or whether the plot is disrupted.

Arrest documents revealed the Denver-based Zazi was carrying a laptop with bomb-making notes when he visited New York on the 9/11 anniversary.

The feds also discovered his fingerprints on batteries and other items that could be used to make explosives. The feds are also investigating reports that Afghan men tried to rent a 26-foot truck from a Queens U-Haul on Sept. 9.

Fertilizer bombs packed into a truck were used by terrorists to attack the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Meanwhile, a bail hearing for Ahmad Afzali, a 37-year-old Queens imam charged with tipping off Zazi that the FBI was on to him was delayed until Thursday.

The FBI said Zazi, arrested in Colorado on Saturday, has admitted being trained in “weapons and explosives” last year at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan.

And sources told The News for the first time that he admits he was out to kill.

The fears of a mass attack, possibly a hit on the transit system, were revealed last week when the feds raided several Flushing apartments that Zazi visited. He returned home Sept. 12. The feds contend Afzali is a double agent who tipped off Zazi – and then lied about it.

(Source: NY Daily News)