Cuomo, touring the site of Saturday’s blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, had said there didn’t appear to be any link to worldwide terrorism. Thankfully no one was injured.
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But after an additional device was found Sunday night outside a restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, authorities seem to be shifting their thinking.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we are increasing security at high-profile locations across the city, and all state agencies continue to remain on alert”, Cuomo said in a statement.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it now looks like the Manhattan bombing could be an act of terrorism with foreign connection.
“We want to get this guy in for questioning”, de Blasio said on CNN. “We have more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this”.
From news reports and an Federal Bureau of Investigation alert we know there was a traffic stop earlier this evening tied to the Chelsea bombing. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time.
The New York Police Department had released a photo of Rahami, 28, and said they wanted to question him about a Saturday night explosion that wounded 29 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood and for a blast earlier that day in Seaside Park, New Jersey, authorities said.
The weekend’s bomb attack was a terrorist act, officials say, but no links have been found to global groups and no group has claimed responsibility. Officials said the explosive in that device appeared to be black powder. One of the devices exploded as a bomb squad used a robot to try to disarm it; the mayor said around 3 a.m. Monday that one robot was destroyed and another had a mechanical arm blown off.
Hours after the Saturday night blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan, there seemed to be more questions than answers.
De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo both said the explosion has no links so far to global terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State, though it’s still early in the investigation.
Citing top law enforcement officials, the New York Times said the two devices were created to use flip phones and Christmas lights to trigger the explosives.
In that incident, investigators discovered three pipe-bomb-type devices wired together.
Also on Saturday, a pipe bomb disrupted a charity run in New Jersey, and a man injured nine people with a knife at a Minnesota shopping mall. The race was canceled and no one was injured. There turned out to be five devices in the bag.
Both bombs in the lower Midtown district of Chelsea appeared designed to create maximum chaos and fatalities they also provided a trove of clues even as any suspects remained unnervingly at large.
No injuries were reported in the incident and no more detonations will be done, according to reports. He said the unexploded pressure cooker device appeared “similar in design” to the bomb that exploded in Chelsea, but he did not provide details.
The FBI and police are deciding how to remove the device, after the bomb squad suggested the package could be a live bomb. A forensic examination of the device will be sent to the FBI Laboratory at Quantico, Va., police said.
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It has been reported the device that detonated in Manhattan, and another device found nearby, were both shrapnel-filled pressure cookers, similar to those used in the attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013.
