When police officers arrived Rahami pulled out a gun and shot two officers in the torso who were wearing bullet proof jackets.
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“We have every reason to believe this was an act of terror”, he said.
Flee Jones, 27, who said he’d known Rahami since they were teenagers, told reporters he’d noticed a change in Rahami’s personality after a trip to Afghanistan several years ago. In the immediate aftermath of that bombing, de Blasio and Cuomo were careful to say there was no evidence of a link to worldwide terrorism.
A similar bomb was found four blocks away but it did not detonate.
Authorities in New Jersey also believe that Rahami could be linked to the explosion of a bomb on Saturday morning in the New Jersey town of Seaside Park before the start of a footrace in which some 5,000 people were scheduled to compete.
Investigators think Rahami may have been trying to emulate the Boston bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off a pipe bomb at the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 which killed three and injured 264 others.
Late Sunday night, five explosive devices were discovered in a trash can at an Elizabeth train station.
The unexploded device was then examined for clues to the bomber’s identity.
The Times will update this article.
Bollwage said he wasn’t willing to say that Elizabeth had become a target, and that it was possible that someone anxious about the authorities was trying to get rid of the package.
The official says Ahmad Khan Rahami is seen in surveillance footage “clear as day” at the scene of the Saturday night bombing in Manhattan.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officers searched the family restaurant and apartment of bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami.
Though FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr., said there is “no indication” of an active operating cell in the NY area, evidence suggests Rahami was not acting alone, said Rep. Adam Schiff and a National Counterterrorism Center official.
Investigators have not determined if those two men are connected to the man with the duffel bag, the sources said.
– As FBI and other officials continued to piece together what exactly took place Saturday in New York City, city officials in Elizabeth, New Jersey, were conducting their own investigation.
“While the enemy is more nimble and harder to find, in many ways we should give at least some credit to a more nimble counterterrorism apparatus as well”, she says.
NY bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami is now in police custody but authorities are still trying to track down two other men who may have unwittingly played a role in planting – and perhaps disabling – a bomb that failed to detonate in Manhattan on Saturday.
Christian Bollwage on Monday said the city’s decision occurred because of “all the people hanging out there” at all hours.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed with Cuomo.
New Yorkers receive an emergency text alert asking for any information on Rahami’s wherabouts.
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The bombings and subsequent finds came just days before the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in NY.
