A 27-year-old male suspect intentionally detonated an improvised, low-tech explosive device that he was wearing on Monday morning around 7:20 a.m. EST in New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal injuring four people, including himself.
The suspect, Akayed Ullah, had burns and wounds to his body when the NYPD responded to the scene. He is in custody and was transported to Bellevue Hospital.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill called it a “terror-related incident.”
It was reported that the male suspect is originally from Bangladesh, lives in Brooklyn and has been in the U.S. for seven years.
Former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton said the preliminary information indicates that the attack was carried out in the name of ISIS.
“The preliminary information from three sources, and I emphasize my former word, preliminary, subject to change: It is a man in his middle 20s probably, possibly from Bangladesh. Been in the country about seven years, who was supposedly setting the device off in the name of ISIS. So definitely a terrorist attack, definitely intended,” Bratton said.
NYPD sources have said it was a pipe bomb explosion in an underground passageway that connects the 7th and 8th Avenue tracks, and that the suspect might have been on his way toward Times Square.
Law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that the suspect was reportedly wearing a pipe bomb that was strapped to him – a suicide vest.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal has since been re-opened. And, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is now investigating the explosion.
The attack comes just six weeks after a man driving a truck drove down a Manhattan bike bath and killed eight people.
