The FBI, Homeland Security and hundreds of other law enforcement officials were on the scene.
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Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
Federal investigators in Quantico, Virginia, are examining evidence from Saturday’s explosions in New Jersey and NY. Authorities said dozens suffered minor injuries.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (right) and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (middle) look over a mangled dumpster while touring the site of the Chelsea explosion.
Investigators scrambled to find out who planted a bomb that rocked a bustling New York City neighborhood and why Sunday, scouring shrapnel, forensic traces and surveillance video for any link to an unexploded pressure-cooker device found a few blocks away.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, touring the site of the blast in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, said there didn’t appear to be any link to worldwide terrorism.
“At this time there is no evidence of an global terrorism connection with this incident but it is very, very early in the investigation and it’s just starting”, Cuomo told reporters on Sunday, reiterating what Mayor Bill de Blasio said just hours after the blast. But we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this.
“Was it a political motivation, a personal motivation”.
“We know there was a bombing, that much we do know”.
A USA official said that a Joint Terrorism Task Force, an interagency group of federal, state and local officials, was called to investigate the Chelsea blast, suggesting authorities have not ruled out the possibility of a terror connection. All of them have since been released from the hospital. The New Jersey race was cancelled and no one was injured.
A second bomb was reported by a woman who said she noticed the device in a bag outside her home, the newspaper reported.
The blast at 8.30 pm local time was preceded by another explosion at an ex-servicemen’s charity event in neighboring New Jersey state where no one was injured.
The explosion left many rattled in a city that had marked the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks only a week earlier and where a United Nations meeting to address the refugee crisis in Syria was scheduled on Monday. “You didn’t know if was coming from the subway beneath you, you didn’t know if there were other bombs, you didn’t know where to go”.
“Now, I want to be clear whatever the cause, whatever the intention here, New Yorkers will not be intimidated”, the mayor said.
Also at the press conference, it was revealed that components of what appear to be an improvised explosive device were found at the scene of the Chelsea blast.
In St. Cloud, Minnesota, police said multiple people were injured at a shopping mall Saturday evening in an attack that possibly involved both a shooting and stabbing.
He also directed the state police and National Guard to deploy an additional 1,000 uniformed officers to high-profile locations across the state.
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.
The pressure cooker was discovered about three hours after the first explosion, four blocks to the north.
However, what I do know is that If I don’t do what needs to be done nobody will pay attention.
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“All I saw was a big light, and then I heard the explosion”, he said.
