Authorities are not certain if the bomb was placed at the New Jersey location or if it was discarded to elude investigators.
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Following the discovery, the Federal Bureau of Investigation have carried out a search warrant at a premises in the city of Elizabeth.
An explosion Saturday night in New York City injured 29 people.
The Chelsea blast followed a pipe bomb explosion on Saturday morning along the route of a running race in the New Jersey beach town of Seaside Park.
ELIZABETH – Police detonated a suspicious package early on Monday near a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, following concerns that it might contain a live explosive device, the city’s mayor said.
“They started to examine the backpack, that’s when they found the wires and the pipes”.
Authorities recovered five devices in the backpack, one of which exploded during an attempt to disarm it using a robot. No injuries were reported.
Bollwage made his comments while standing across the street from a fried chicken restaurant where Ahmad Khan Rahami worked. Rahami was arrested Monday after a shootout with police in Linden that left two officers wounded. A spokesman for Bollwage had earlier described the blast as a controlled detonation. Bomb techs from the FBI, Union County, & the New Jersey State Police have arrived on the scene and are now rendering the area safe. “I don’t believe the City of Elizabeth at this stage – was a target”, he said, according to WUNF.
With investigation underway, train services were suspended between Newark’s Liberty Airport and Elizabeth, while New Jersey-bound Amtrak trains from NY were being held at the Penn Station.
Amtrak, which ferries train passengers up and down the Eastern seaboard, also suspended service overnight.
Early Monday morning, Schulz said that Amtrak trains had been moved into stations so that passengers could disembark and find other ways to travel.
All New Jersey Transit service along the Northeast Corridor and New Jersey Coast lines has been suspended. Officials said it didn’t appear that those two incidents were connected, though they weren’t ruling anything out.
Two men found a backpack with multiple explosive devices in a trash can in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Sunday.
Meanwhile, five people were arrested in Brooklyn during a traffic stop last night in connection with Saturday’s explosion and were believed to be heading to the airport with guns in their vehicle.
Elizabeth is located about 16 miles southwest of New York City.
“We need to get this guy in right away”, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on CNN.
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The heightened alert comes as world leaders are gathering Monday for the United Nations General Assembly.
