Three Kansas men have been accused of plotting attacks targeting an apartment complex home, a mosque and many Muslim immigrants from Somalia, authorities said Friday.

Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Eugene Stein face federal charges of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department announced.

This Oct. 14, 2016 photo provided by the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office in Wichita, Kan., shows Curtis Allen. Allen is one of three members of a Kansas militia group were charged Friday Oct. 14, 2016, with plotting to bomb an apartment building filled with Somali immigrants in Garden City, Kan. Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said Allen, Patrick Eugene Stein and Gavin Wright are members of a group calling itself the Kansas Security Force. Beall says the arrests were the culmination of an eight-month investigation. (Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office via AP) Curtis Allen (Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

“These charges are based on eight months of investigation by the FBI that is alleged to have taken the investigators deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence,” acting U.S. attorney Tom Beall said in a statement. “Many Kansans may find it as startling as I do that such things could happen here.”

The three men charged Friday were ultimately identified as the architects of the attack plan through a combination of recordings, social media and reporting from the confidential informant, according to the complaint.

The members of the group routinely expressed their hatred for Muslims, Somalis and immigrants. In one call, Stein allegedly said the country could be turned around only with “a bloodbath.” The individuals said they wanted to “wake people up” and inspire other militia groups to act.

The FBI says that as part of this alleged plot, the men conducted surveillance in Garden City, Kan., a small city about 200 miles west of Wichita, and other places in southwestern Kansas.

The three men had been plotting “to use a weapon of mass destruction” since February, according to the FBI complaint.

But they considered a variety of attacks — acting quickly and violently with a few guns or plotting a more complex plan that would maximize casualties. The simplest plan, a frustrated Stein suggested at a meeting in June, was grabbing a gun and driving to Garden City, where the men would “start kicking in the doors of the Somali apartments, and kill them one by one.”