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Chris Duffy |
NY TIMES
A bomb that injured 29 people on Saturday in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and another that failed to detonate, were filled with shrapnel and made with pressure cookers, flip phones and Christmas lights to set off a powerful explosive compound, law enforcement officials said on Sunday. A second device on 27th Street that did not explode appeared to be filled with the same material, the official said.
The bomb in Manhattan was placed under a Dumpster made of heavy-gauge steel, and was powerful enough to catapult the metal box across the street.
The 29 people who were wounded mostly suffered cuts and abrasions. All who were taken to local hospitals had been released by Sunday morning.
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| The police hauled away the second bomb in a chamber called a “total containment vessel.”Sandra E. Garcia/The New York Times |
Both bombs appeared designed to create maximum chaos and fatalities. They also provided a trove of clues.Late Sunday night, two law enforcement officials said that investigators stopped a car on the Belt Parkway near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and took five people to an F.B.I. office in Manhattan for questioning in the bombing investigation. One of the officials said that all or most of them may have been from the same family and that they may have been on their way to the airport.
Earlier, two senior law enforcement officials said there was a “person of interest” in the bombing, but it was unclear if that person had been identified. The person had been seen on surveillance footage.
Tensions in the region, already high, escalated on Sunday night when, according to J. Christian Bollwage, the mayor of Elizabeth, N.J., a backpack containing explosive devices — including pipe bombs — was found near that city’s train station. In trying to secure the devices, law enforcement officals, using robots, accidentally detonated one of the devices early Monday, he said. There were no injuries.
Senior law enforcement officials also said they were increasingly focused on the possibility that the attack was connected to a bombing that took place Saturday morning in Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
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| Andres Kudacki/Associated Press |