The recent terror in the New York city has shocked the world. Here are the details of the attack and the bomber.
On the surface, Akayed Ullah seemed to be an ordinary member of a Bangladeshi enclave in Brooklyn. He often prayed at a mosque in an unassuming brownstone in the Kensington section of the borough, where a few thousand of his countrymen reside. Like many immigrants in New York, he made his living — at least for a while — driving for a car service.
But on Monday morning, Mr. Ullah, 27, strapped a pipe bomb to his body and set out to detonate it in a Times Square subway station, the police said, not only causing chaos among crowds of commuters, but also leaving behind a trail of mystery that baffled those who knew him.
“He was a good guy,” said Mohammad Yousuf, a cabdriver who prayed with Mr. Ullah at the mosque. “I can’t believe he would do anything like this.”
According to several law enforcement officials, Mr. Ullah said he set off the bomb in retaliation for American airstrikes in Syria and elsewhere, targeting members of the Islamic State, or ISIS. He told investigators that he had been radicalized online and had made a number of trips overseas in the past five years, visiting Bangladesh in recent months, one of the officials said.
Mr. Ullah admitted that he had looked up online how to build the bomb and had assembled it in his residence in Brooklyn, purchasing all of the materials except the pipe, which he said he found at a job site where he was working as an electrician at 39th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, two of the officials said.
Immigration officials said that Mr. Ullah arrived in the United States from Bangladesh in 2011 on a family immigrant visa and has lived in Brooklyn ever since as a legal permanent resident. According to the terms of his visa, Mr. Ullah was the nephew of an American citizen and benefited from what the officials called “extended family chain migration.”
According to census statistics compiled by Queens College, Kensington is home to more than 3,000 Bangladeshi-born New Yorkers, making it the largest Bangladeshi enclave in Brooklyn. Mian Quadry, a representative of the Bangladesh Muslim Center in Kensington, said he did not know Mr. Ullah, adding, “This is not what and who we are.”
“The Kensington community we have,” Mr. Quadry said, “it’s people who work very hard just to provide for our family.”
The Masjid Nur Al Islam mosque, which Mr. Ullah was said to have attended, sits on the corner of Church and Chester Avenues in Kensington. It was closed on Monday. One man, who has worshiped at the mosque for 15 years and gave his name only as Mohammad, said Mr. Ullah prayed there regularly, especially during Ramadan. Mr. Ullah, Mohammad said, was close to the mosque’s imam and was often seen with him at afternoon prayers. But Mr. Yousuf, the cabdriver, said he had not seen Mr. Ullah at the mosque in the past five or six months.
From 2012 to 2015, Mr. Ullah held a license issued by the city to drive for-hire vehicles, city officials said. The officials were unable to say if Mr. Ullah had driven a yellow cab or for a private service like Lyft or Uber. It was also unclear, they said, if he had his own car or drove for an employer.
Police officials in Bangladesh said on Monday that they had never heard of Mr. Ullah, and the country’s embassy in Washington issued a statement declaring a “zero tolerance” policy toward terrorism. “A terrorist is a terrorist irrespective of his or her ethnicity or religion,” the statement said, “and must be brought to justice.”
The blast took place in the subway station at the Port Authority bus terminal, not far from the city’s iconic Times Square, sparking commuter panic and travel disruptions.
Ullah’s bomb failed to detonate properly, leaving him the only one seriously injured in the incident. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was in serious condition with burns to his hands and abdomen, according to Daniel A. Nigro, the commissioner of the New York Fire Department. Three other people had minor injuries, he said.
The attack came as the Christmas-New Year holiday season was moving into high gear, underscoring the possible threat that lone actors inspired by Islamic State or Al-Qaeda pose to festive crowds.
In Berlin last year, an IS-inspired Tunisian refugee drove a large truck into a crowd at a Christmas market, killing 12.
Islamic State supporters have made online threats and urged sympathisers to conduct attacks on Western targets during the holiday season.
New York was rocked on Oct 31, the Halloween holiday, when an immigrant from Uzbekistan drove a rented truck down a busy bike and pedestrian path, killing eight people and injuring 12.
In November, the US State Department issued an alert for travelers to Europe during the holiday season, reminding them of the Berlin attack as well as the assault on a New Years Eve party in an Istanbul nightclub last year that left 39 people dead.
“US citizens should exercise caution at holiday festivals and events,” the State Department warned.
“Extremists continue to focus on tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls and local government facilities as viable targets.”
Cuomo said the latest bombing underscored that New York is a perennial target, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks.
“This is New York. The reality is that we are a target by many who would like to make a statement against democracy, against freedom,” he said.
A bomb in a subway station “is in many ways one of our worst nightmares,” Cuomo said.
President Donald Trump used the attack to call for tougher US immigration rules, saying the current “lax” policy “allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country.”
“Today’s attempted mass murder attack in New York City – the second terror attack in New York in the last two months – once again highlights the urgent need for Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people,” Trump said in a statement.
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