New York bombing suspect held – Minnesota stabbings realize terror fears

This news has been read 5662 times!

NEW YORK, Sept 19, (Agencies): An “armed and dangerous” Afghan-born suspect wanted in the weekend bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey was wounded Monday in a shootout with police and taken into custody. The Saturday attacks and a separate stabbing carried out by a Somali-American with possible links to the Islamic State extremist group has put America on edge over terror fears less than 50 days before the presidential election.

President Barack Obama, in New York on Monday attending the UN General Assembly with world leaders, called on Americans “not to succumb to fear” in his first remarks about the three attacks in the same 24-hour period. “Even as we have to be vigilant and aggressive both in preventing senseless acts of violence but also making sure that we find those who carry out such acts and bring them to justice, we all have a role to play as citizens in making sure that we don’t succumb to that fear,” he said.

Obama stressed that investigators at this point saw “no connection” between the incidents on the East Coast and the Minnesota stabbing, where police said the attacker made “some references to Allah” in carrying out the attack. Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was shown stretchered into an ambulance, sporting a bloodied bandage on his right arm and moving his head with his eyes open in the New Jersey town of Linden, according to ABC News footage.

Two police officers were also shot and hurt in the exchange, said the mayor of the suspect’s  neighboring hometown Elizabeth, adjacent to Newark International Airport. “Mr Rahami is currently under arrest,” Mayor Chris Bollwage told CNN. “One police officer in the city of Linden was shot in the chest and one was shot in the hand. Mr Rahami also sustained shots,” Bollwage added.

His arrest came around four hours after the FBI released a mugshot of the brownhaired and bearded Rahami, calling him “armed and dangerous,” in text message alerts sent to millions of people in the New York area. FBI officers late Sunday also found and defused a nest of bombs planted at the train station in Elizabeth.

Police want to question Rahami in connection with Saturday night’s bombing in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 29 people and Saturday morning’s Seaside Park pipe bombing, which forced the cancellation of a US Marine race. The discovery of the nest of bombs in Elizabeth may also be linked to the two attacks in New Jersey and in Manhattan, where a pressure cooker bomb was also successfully defused. “From the bombs that were undetonated you can often get good evidence.

You can get finger prints, DNA etc,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on CBS. “And the investigation is now targeting certain individuals who might suggest that this did have a foreign connection,” he added. Little is known about Rahami, other than that his family ran a chicken restaurant and sued Elizabeth in 2011, accusing the city of discrimination stemming from complaints about keeping their business open beyond a curfew.

Fifteen years after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, officials stress that lone-wolf attacks perpetrated by individuals who may be inspired by IS or al-Qaeda propaganda are the greatest terror threat to the homeland. What was still unclear Monday was whether an individual or a wider group was responsible for the bomb attacks and the explosives planted in Elizabeth. Seaside Park is around 69 miles (100 kilometers) from Elizabeth, and 90 miles from Manhattan. “We know a lot more than we did just 24 hours ago.

It’s certainly leaning more in the direction that this was a specific act of terror,” New York Mayor de Blasio told ABC. New York police have beefed up massively in the city, fanning out reinforcements to bus terminals, subway stations and airports. The stabbings of nine people at a Minnesota mall look to be the work of a “lone attacker,” officials said Monday, though federal authorities are still looking at whether it was a potential act of terrorism in an the immigrant-rich state that has struggled to stop the recruiting of its young men by groups including the Islamic State.

“We haven’t uncovered anything that would suggest other than lone attacker at this point,” St Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson said at a news conference with Minnesota Gov Mark Dayton. “If that changes, we will be transparent about that.” A young Somali man dressed as a private security guard entered the Crossroads Center mall Saturday wielding what appeared to be a kitchen knife. Anderson has said the man reportedly made at least one reference to Allah and asked a victim if he or she was Muslim before attacking. The man was shot dead by an off-duty police officer. None of the injured suffered life-threatening wounds.

The motive of Saturday’s attack is still unclear, but FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Rick Thornton has said it is being investigated as a “potential act of terrorism.” The Islamic State claimed responsibility, but it wasn’t clear whether the attacker was radicalized. Authorities were digging into his background and possible motives, looking at social media accounts and electronic devices and talking to his associates, Thornton said.

The attack in St Cloud, a city of about 65,000 people, began shortly after an explosion in a crowded New York City neighborhood injured 29 people. Hours before that, a pipe bomb exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a 5K race.

But President Barack Obama said Monday that authorities see no connection between the New York area explosions and the Minnesota stabbing. Leaders of Minnesota’s large Somali community have condemned the stabbings, saying the suspect — identified by his father as 22-year-old Dahir A. Adan — does not represent them and expressing fear of backlash. St Cloud Mayor David Kleis said an attack like Saturday’s is the type of worry that keeps him “up at night,” but Dayton urged people in St Cloud and around the state to “rise above” such violence.

Experts say that if Saturday’s stabbings are ultimately deemed a terrorist act, it would be the first carried out by a Somali on US soil. An Islamic State-run news agency claimed Sunday that the attacker was a “soldier of the Islamic State” who had heeded the group’s calls for attacks in countries that are part of a US-led anti-IS coalition, but it wasn’t immediately known whether the extremist group had planned the attack or knew about it beforehand. It doesn’t appear anyone else was involved in the attack, which began at about 8 pm and ended minutes later, Anderson has said. Authorities haven’t identified the attacker, but his father, Ahmed Adan, told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune his son’s name through an interpreter and local activists also identified Dahir Adan as Somali.

This news has been read 5662 times!