In addition to the two incidents, officials are probing a backpack containing bombs found in a New Jersey train station on Sunday, and an unexploded pressure-cooker bomb located blocks away from the Chelsea blast site.
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The man in the Minnesota incident, who has not been officially identified, was described a “soldier of the Islamic State”, the militant group’s news agency said on Sunday.
FBI agents walk around the roof outside an apartment during an investigation at a building Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in Elizabeth, N.J.
Authorities said the blasts were looking increasingly like an act of terrorism with a foreign connection.
“As you wake up this morning to the troubling events in NY and New Jersey, please rest assured we have been monitoring the situation throughout the night”, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement released on Twitter.
She provided no other details on her relationship with Ahmad Khan Rahami, except to say she last spoke to him by phone in January.
Earlier on Saturday, an explosive device was partially detonated along the route of a charity 5K run for servicemembers in Seaside, New Jersey. He is a naturalized citizen from Afghanistan. The race was canceled and no one was injured.
In a televised address, President Barack Obama said there was no connection between the incidents in the NY area and the stabbing of eight people at a Minnesota mall by a man who claimed to be a “soldier of the Islamic State”.
Authorities zeroed in on him as the potential bomber after a fingerprint and DNA obtained from one of the NY sites and “clear as day” surveillance video from the bombing scene helped identify him, according to three law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
Earlier, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking in White Plains, New York, also urged Americans to “be vigilant but not afraid”. Cuomo said on MSNBC: “Today’s information suggests it may be foreign-related, but we’ll see where it goes”.
“At this point, we see no connection between that incident and what happened here in NY and New Jersey”, Obama, who was in NY for the United Nations meeting, told reporters.
Late Sunday night, police stopped a vehicle near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn and took into custody five people connected to Rahami for questioning, according to The New York Times. I would say I’m very, very proud of the work of the NYPD and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the way they have so quickly found the suspect, and the kind of cooperation that’s going on. He called on Americans to show the world “we will never give in to fear”.
Rahami lived with his family above their fried-chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, and his relatives have clashed with the city over closing times and noise complaints they said were tinged with anti-Muslim sentiment. Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage said the devices were found in a bag in a trash can by two men who reported seeing wires and a pipe coming out of the package.
Rahami allegedly opened fire on police responding to the scene. He’s a very friendly guy, that’s what’s so scary.
The bomb that rocked a bustling Manhattan neighborhood contained residue of an explosive often used for target practice that can be picked up in many sporting goods stores, a federal law enforcement official said Sunday, as authorities tried to unravel who planted the device and why.
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“Our focus now is on a much more disparate threat that’s hard to see – unpredictable, motivated, and driven by people who are just disturbed”, he said in an interview posted Friday on the FBI’s website. One of the devices exploded as a bomb squad was attempting to disarm it with a robot. No one was hurt.
