Naturalized US citizen from Afghanistan sought in NYC blast

Published 10:32 am Monday, September 19, 2016

NEW YORK — Police released a photo of a 28-year-old immigrant wanted for questioning today in the bombing that rocked a Manhattan neighborhood, and the governor and mayor said the blast is looking increasingly like an act of terrorism with a foreign connection.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan with an address in Elizabeth, New Jersey, should be considered armed and dangerous, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in one of a series of TV appearances just minutes after the photo was released.

In addition to the blast in Chelsea on Saturday, a pipe bomb exploded in a New Jersey shore town before a charity 5K race and an unexploded pressure cooker device was found blocks away from the explosion site in Chelsea. On Sunday, five explosive devices were discovered at a New Jersey train station.

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Authorities are investigating whether the bombings and explosive devices were related.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said as investigators gathered information they learned there were “certain commonalities among the bombs,” leading authorities to believe “that there was a common group behind the bombs.”

“We want to get this guy in for questioning,” de Blasio said on CNN. “We need the facts to be able to piece all this together. … I think we’re going to know a lot more in the course of the day. Things are moving very quickly.”

Early today, FBI agents swarmed an apartment above a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth that’s tied to Rahami. The activity came hours after one of five devices found at the nearby Elizabeth train station exploded while a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it. No one was injured.

Saturday night’s blast in the bustling Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan injured 29 people, and another unexploded device made out of pressure cooker was found several blocks away. In the immediate aftermath of that bombing, de Blasio and Cuomo were careful to say there was no evidence of a link to international terrorism. Both said today that appears to be changing.

“The more we learn with each passing hour is it looks more like terrorism,” de Blasio said in a later interview on NY1 News.

Cuomo, in a separate interview on MSNBC, said: “Today’s information suggests it may be foreign related but we’ll see where it goes. … My operating premise is anytime, anywhere, seven days a week you could have an incident like this.”

The White House said President Barack Obama was briefed throughout the night and early today on the investigation into bombs found in New York City and New Jersey. Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama will comment publicly later today.

On Sunday night, FBI agents in Brooklyn stopped “a vehicle of interest” in the investigation of the Manhattan explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.

She wouldn’t provide further details, but a government official and a law enforcement official who were briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press that five people in the car were being questioned at an FBI building in Manhattan.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation.