The NYPD also removed a possible secondary device on 27th Street four blocks away.
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President Barack Obama, who is set to visit the city for the UNGA session beginning tomorrow, has been apprised of the explosion, a White House official said.
A second device was discovered blocks away, removed by a bomb squad robot and is being examined at a police facility.
Only one of the three bombs detonated, and no one was injured in the blast, which occurred shortly before thousands of runners were due to participate in a charity 5K to benefit US Marines and sailors.
The Chelsea district of Manhattan, New York was rocked by an explosion on Saturday night, injuring at least 29 people in what authorities say is a deliberate criminal act, though connections to terror have yet to be found.
But, he said, the possibility of a connection “will continue to be considered …”
Mayor Bill de Blasio and police officials are expected to brief reporters at the scene. Authorities say more than two dozen people were injured in the explosion Saturday night. It’s a awful thing that’s going on in our world, in our country and we are going to get tough and smart and vigilant’.
Terrorism is essentially a legal term describing a purposeful attack, motivated by political or ideological means, to alter politics or society through violence, Kayyem explained.
The first device, which exploded on West 23rd Street at about 8:30 p.m., appeared to have been caused by an explosive device placed inside a toolbox in front of a building undergoing construction, the law enforcement official said.
“When you see the damage, I think we were fortunate that there were no fatalities”, Cuomo said on Sunday.
The FBI is evaluating a claim of responsibility for the New York City bombing on the social blogging service Tumblr.
And investigators are looking at another suspicious device that was found blocks away from the NY explosion site: a pressure cooker with dark-colored wiring, according to law enforcement officials.
The suspicious device, recovered at 27th St. and 7th Ave., was a pressure cooker sealed with duct tape with a cable extending from it connected to a cell phone.
Without knowing the motivations behind the explosion it’s premature to label the blast a terror attack, “unless you want to define terrorism as any violent act in an urban area”, she said. “What was it? We do not know that yet”, de Blasio said.
An explosion in the heart of New York’s Chelsea neighborhood sent dozens to the hospital Saturday night. They said the device has been rendered safe and that a forensic examination of the device will be conducted at the FBI Laboratory at Quantico, Virginia. But Governor Andrew Cuomo said that “a bomb exploding in NY is obviously an act of terrorism”, He deployed 1,000 officers and National Guard members to various transit hubs across the city as a precaution.
“We have no reason to believe at this time that there is any further immediate threat”, Cuomo said. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can.
“Everything that needs to be done is being done and more”, Cuomo said.
Federal and NY law enforcement officials gave no details. Another image showed a Dumpster or trash bin blown apart, with bits of debris scattered on the sidewalk. Officials are still trying to assess what caused explosion the source said.
He says the response by police who swarmed the area was “aggressive” but “controlled”. No one was injured.
Chelsea resident Michelle Leifer was walking her dog in Madison Square Park when she “heard a loud boom and felt rumbling”, she told ABC News.
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“This is one of the nightmare scenarios”.
