Amid scenes of a dramatic shootout, US authorities on Monday took into custody an Afghan-American in connection with the bombings in New York and New Jersey over the weekend.
The wanted man, identified as Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was injured in the encounter in linden, New Jersey. Two police officers were also wounded.
The capture came barely two hours after the FBI and New York Police issued an a cellphone alert to millions of residents in and around New York City, asking them to be on the look-out for Rahami, describing him as “armed and dangerous”.
The alert for Rahami was issued after extensive exercises on Sunday that included interception of a “vehicle of interest” and questioning of five people.
Police surveillance cameras had also picked up images of Rahami near the two Manhattan locations where bombs had been placed. Fingerprints had also been lifted from the pressure cooker bomb that failed to explode at the second location.
An eyewitness to Rahami’s capture told Fox News that he saw one man walking down a street with a gun in his hand. A police car pulled up next to him and the man fired at the car 4-6 times. The suspect and the two injured officers were all taken to hospital.
The Rahami arrest came in the aftermath of yet another attempted terror strike, leaving a backpack of improvised explosive devices at a New Jersey railway station late on Sunday night. One of these devices exploded even as authorities tried to disarm it by using a robot. Nobody was injured in this episode.
Police began looking for Rahami on Monday morning by raiding a premises in Elizabeth, New Jersey, said to be Rahami’s last known address. Rahami was not there. He was subsequently traced to linden, a few miles away.
The Rahami family, according to Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage, had issues with the city in the past over the operation of their family restaurant, called First American Fried Chicken.
“I would not be surprised if we did have a foreign connection to the act,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday morning, while Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers: “I want to be very clear that this individual (Rahami) could be armed and dangerous. Anyone seeing him should call 911 (US emergency number).”
ISIS for its part claimed credit for Saturday’s stabbing spree in a Minnesota mall that injured nine people, describing the attacker as one of its soldiers. Identified as Dahir A. Adan, a 22-year-old Somali-American, the knife-wielding attacker was shot dead by an off-duty police officer.
The US authorities are now said to be investigating all three incidents as possible terror acts. Media reports said investigators believe Rahami may be part of a terror cell.
A law enforcement official cited by The New York Times said Rahami was connected not just to the Manhattan explosion, but also to the Seaside Park bombing in New Jersey.
A surveillance video reportedly captured the Afghan-American’s image at both at the site of the Manhattan explosion and another point a few blocks away where the bomb did not go off.