“We receive great cooperation and appreciate the support from the federal authorities and the NYPD throughout the year, and especially during the General Assembly to keep staff, delegates and visitors safe”, Dujarric said.
Advertisement
What we know: Around 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, an explosion occurred at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue on Manhattan’s west side.
While officials described all three as deliberate, criminal acts and were investigating them as potential “acts of terrorism”, they stopped short of characterizing the motivation behind any of them until more evidence is uncovered.
An explosion on a residential street in the Chelsea neighborhood injured 29 people.
Another witness, Denise Coles, said the bomb went off as she was pulling into a parking place. Where did the explosive come from?
How many people were hurt?
“All I saw was a big light, and then I heard the explosion”, he told CNN.”I could feel it in my chest”.
Fire Department Commissioner Daniel Nigro said several people were taken to hospitals with injuries.
What we don’t know: Some of the victims closest to the explosion were at a loss for how the blast occurred.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is asking Emmys attendees to remain vigilant in the wake of explosions in New York City and New Jersey.
What’s the latest on the investigation?
Late on Sunday evening in New Jersey two men found a package with wires and a pipe coming out of it, Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage said. A law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that the second device discovered a few blocks from the scene appeared to be a pressure cooker attached to wiring and a cellphone. Police recovered video from both scenes in Manhattan including images of the explosion itself, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Sunday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is aware of the posting and was working to determine its authenticity. Some of the video is not helpful because the cameras are either too far away or the footage is too grainy to tell what’s on it, the official said.
The New York Times reported both the exploded and unexploded bombs had similar contents created to cause the maximum amount of death and destruction, filled with “fragmentation materials” such as ball bearings and BBs, and similarly constructed with Christmas lights and cellphones.
Federal investigators in Quantico, Virginia, are examining evidence from Saturday’s explosions in New Jersey and NY.
“Whoever did this, we will find and they will be brought to justice. Yes, we have to move in that direction, but right now we’re not ready to make those calls yet”.
Police are searching for details on what caused the explosion that sent diners and others pouring in to the streets, CNN reported.
“Tonight, New York City experienced a very bad incident”, de Blasio said at a news conference near the scene in Chelsea.
The explosion was so loud that it reverberated across the Hudson River all the way to Hoboken, New Jersey, according to social media users. I saw pieces of metal – not large, but not small either. “A few friends of mine saw glass there”. The device was removed with a robot and taken to a department firing range in the Bronx.
What we know: No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
What we don’t know: Officials say they haven’t discovered any connection between the bombing and global terror groups, but they’ve offered different assessments about whether the explosion should be described as terrorism. That’s how we’ll consider it.
Earlier Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the bombing didn’t appear to have any link to worldwide terrorism.
De Blasio and city law enforcement leaders said more needs to be known about the motive behind the blast before calling it a terror attack.
Advertisement
“We do not have any specific evidence of a connection, but that will continue to be considered”, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. But the mayor resisted on Sunday when reporters pressed him to call the blast an act of terrorism, saying investigators had yet to determine if there was a political motivation. “It could have been something personally motivated. We do not know that yet”.
