A bomb attack in New York City was a terrorist act, officials say, but no links have been found to global groups and the motivation remains unclear.
“Was it a political motivation? A personal motivation? We do not know,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. Saturday night’s blast in Manhattan injured 29 people. They have all now been released from hospital.
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said: “Whoever placed these bombs – we will find them and they will be brought to justice.”
A second device – reportedly a pressure cooker attached to wiring and a mobile phone – had been found four blocks from the site of the explosion in the Chelsea district and was removed safely.
Addressing reporters on Sunday, Mr de Blasio said: “We know there was a bombing. That much we do know. We know it’s a very serious incident. But we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this.
“All possible theories of what’s happened here and how it connects will be looked at but we have no specific evidence at this point in time.”
The mayor vowed: “We will keep the public informed every step of the way.”
Speaking earlier near the site of the blast, Mr Cuomo said that significant damage had been caused and “we were lucky there were no fatalities”. Some 1,000 extra security personnel are being deployed to New York’s transport hubs.
Mr Cuomo said: “A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism.”
But he said that, as yet, no international organisation such as so-called Islamic State had claimed they were behind it.
Mr Cuomo said: “We will not allow these type of people and these type of threats to disrupt our life in New York. This is freedom. This is democracy, and we are not going to allow them to take that from us.
“They want to instil terror. They want to make you worry about going into New York. We’re not going to let them instil fear.”
Mr Cuomo said that the attack was one of the “nightmare scenarios” a governor must face, but he added: “We have no reason to believe at this time that there is any further immediate threat.”
He said the two devices in New York appeared similar in design, but different from the pipe bomb that detonated earlier on Saturday on the route of a charity race in New Jersey. That explosion caused no injuries. (BBC)
