Failed NY bomb seen as potential terrorist attack
A car bomb defused in New York's Times Square was a potential terrorist attack, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Sunday, while officials held off identifying who may be responsible.
Police, tipped off by a street vendor, found the crude but powerful bomb in a sport utility vehicle when the entertainment and shopping area of Midtown Manhattan was packed with tourists and theater-goers on a warm Saturday evening.
"We're taking this very seriously," Napolitano told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "We're treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack."
Napolitano and other officials have not said whether the suspects could be Americans or foreigners. No claim of responsibility has been made public and police have said no motive or suspect has been identified.
Authorities said the bomb -- made of propane, gasoline and fireworks -- could have killed many people. Times Square was evacuated on Saturday evening and largely reopened to vehicles and pedestrians just after 5 a.m. (0900 GMT) on Sunday.
"This wasn't make believe. This wasn't a false alarm. This was the real deal -- to hurt people," said Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano, adding the force of a bomb could have taken down the front of a building.
New York has been on high alert since the September 11 attacks in 2001 when airliners hijacked by al Qaeda militants toppled the World Trade Center's twin towers, killing more than 2,600 people.
The worst domestic attack in the United States killed 168 people in 1995 when a truck bomb planted by Timothy McVeigh and another right-wing extremist exploded at a federal building in Oklahoma City.
NO IDEA WHO OR WHY
Security analyst Ben Venzke called the Times Square bomb "a significant terrorist event" and said Islamist militants have promoted the value of using propane canisters in attacks but he warned it was too early to determine who was responsible.
"It may have been the work of a jihadist group such as al Qaeda or just as easily could have been the work of a domestic group or individual with no connection to any jihadist agenda," said Venzke, head of Virginia-based IntelCenter.
Napolitano told ABC News there was no evidence the incident in Times Square was "anything other than a one-off" and that the bomb "doesn't look like it is a very sophisticated one."
State and local police were told "to be on their toes," she said on ABC's "This Week" program.
New York police said they had searched transit hubs, landmarks and other sensitive areas after the Times Square bomb was discovered but did not find anything suspicious.
"We have no idea who did this or why," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told an early morning news conference.
Bloomberg said a T-shirt vendor noticed "an unoccupied suspicious vehicle" and alerted a police officer on horseback, who saw the dark-green Nissan Pathfinder had smoke coming from vents near the back seat and smelled of gun powder.
The bomb was found around 6:30 p.m. (2230 GMT) on Saturday inside the vehicle parked on 45th Street and Broadway with its engine running and hazard lights flashing, officials said. It had Connecticut license plates that were from another vehicle.
The bomb squad removed and dismantled three propane tanks, consumer grade fireworks, two filled five-gallon (19-liter) gasoline containers, two clocks, batteries in each of the clocks, electrical wire and other components.
A locked metal box resembling a gun locker was also removed and taken to a safe location to be detonated.
The vehicle was removed from Times Square about 6 a.m. (1000 GMT) and was being examined by forensics experts.
(Additional reporting by Steve Eder, Clare Baldwin, Jonathan Spicer and Deepa Seetharaman in New York and Jeremy Pelofsky and Ross Colvin in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller and John O'Callaghan)
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