Urgent search for bomber after 29 injured in New York blast

New York and federal authorities were today urgently searching for a bomber at large after 29 people were injured by a roadside blast in Manhattan and an unexploded second bomb was found nearby by police.

FBI officials were examining a bomb inside a pressure cooker, apparently wired to a mobile phone, which was discovered inside a plastic bag a few blocks from where a powerful explosion fired shrapnel at passing pedestrians on Saturday night.

"Whoever placed these bombs, we will find and they will be brought to justice," New York governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene.

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People look on as the police, fire department and other first responders work near an explosion on West 23rd Street on Saturday in New York. Photograph: Brian R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images

“We will not allow these kinds of people and these kinds of threats to disrupt our life in New York.”

All 29 people who were wounded have been treated and released from hospitals, officials said. “When you see the damage I think we were fortunate that there were no fatalities,” Mr Cuomo said. “The force of the explosion, you can see it down the street: there’s glass everywhere, shrapnel everywhere.”

He and other officials said no evidence had been found linking the bombs to major international terrorist groups. Such an intentional explosion in a public place was, however, “generically a terrorist activity”, the governor said.

“There is no link at this time at this preliminary stage to international terrorism. You can guess, you can hypothesise, or you can just wait for the facts and go from there. I’d be dubious on speculating on what we don’t know.”

About 1,000 additional state police officers and National Guard officials will be deployed to monitor New York’s transport system and other important sites, Mr Cuomo said, to ensure that “New York is up and running” for the working week.

Bustling area

The explosion rang out soon after 8.30pm on Saturday, on West 23rd St between Sixth and Seventh avenues in the Chelsea section of Manhattan - a bustling area mixing residential properties, shops and restaurants.

Officials told reporters that the bomb appeared to have exploded either inside or beside a construction dumpster on the street outside a small hotel and a centre for blind people.

The pressure cooker was discovered about three hours after the first explosion, four blocks to the north. The device immediately drew comparisons to the pressure cooker bombs exploded amid crowds at the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding dozens of others.

The first device in New York exploded on Saturday, just hours after a pipe bomb blast in neighbouring New Jersey shortly before thousands of runners were due to take part in a charity 5km race for the benefit of US Marines and sailors.

The explosion tore through a plastic garbage can in the borough of Seaside Park at about 9.30am, according to authorities. No injuries were reported and no surrounding buildings appeared to be damaged.

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said today that no evidence had yet been found linking the pipe bomb in his state with the later explosions in New York. "The bombs that were in Seaside, New Jersey, appear to be different than the ones in Manhattan," Mr Cuomo said.

“They are terrorism, though, there’s no doubt about that,” Mr Christie told CNN. “They’re terrorism - who is responsible is something else, and what the motive was is something else that hopefully we’re going to find out.”

Neha Jain (24) who lives in the neighborhood where the blast took place, said she was sitting at home watching a film when she heard a huge boom and everything shook.

‘We could smell smoke’

“Pictures on my wall fell, the window curtain came flying as if there was a big gush of wind,” she told Reuters. “Then we could smell smoke. We went downstairs to see what happened, and firemen immediately told us to go back.”

Residents living nearby were advised to stay away from windows facing the street as a precaution, and the item was later safely moved to a police firing range for further examination, officer Christopher Pisano said.

The latest blast came less than a week after police forces around the US ere on heightened alert for the 15th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001, airline-hijacking attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Remaining circumspect about the exact nature of the explosion in Chelsea, Mr De Blasio said early indications were that it was "an intentional act". He added that the site of the blast, outside on a major thoroughfare in the fashionable West Side Manhattan neighbourhood, was being treated as a crime scene.

A US 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.

A joint task force also took the lead in investigating the New Jersey incident.

An official told Reuters an initial investigation suggested the Chelsea explosion occurred in a skip. CNN cited law enforcement sources as saying they believed an improvised explosive device caused the blast.

President Barack Obama, attending a congressional dinner in Washington, "has been apprised of the explosion in New York City, the cause of which remains under investigation", a White House official said.

Additional reporting: Guardian/Reuters