NEW YORK -- A man inspired by Islamic State extremists strapped on a crude pipe bomb, slipped unnoticed into the nation's busiest subway system and set off the device during rush hour Monday in New York City, authorities said.
In the end, the only serious wounds were suffered by the suspect, Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant and former cabdriver, authorities said. But the blast echoed through the subway tunnels near Times Square and filled parts of the Port Authority Bus Terminal with smoke as commuters fled into the streets.
Three people suffered headaches and ringing ears from the blast.
"This was an attempted terrorist attack," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "Thank God the perpetrator did not achieve his ultimate goals."
The Monday morning blast occurred in a long pedestrian walkway connecting the Eighth Avenue, Seventh Avenue and Broadway subway lines. Security cameras showed the attacker walking casually through a crowded passageway under 42nd Street when the bomb went off , releasing a plume of white smoke.
Ullah had attached the pipe bomb to himself with a "combination of Velcro and zip ties," said James O'Neill, commissioner of the New York Police Department. The secure fastening may have indicated that Ullah entered the subway intending to carry out a suicide bombing.
At a news conference on Eighth Avenue just outside the Port Authority, police displayed a picture of Ullah that appeared to have been taken in the subway walkway after the blast. In it, he is curled in a fetal position; his exposed stomach is blackened.
Port Authority police said officers found the man injured on the ground, with wires protruding from his jacket to his pants and the device strapped to his torso under his coat. They said he was reaching for a cellphone when they grabbed his hands.
The bomb was constructed by stuffing match heads into a narrow length of pipe and securing both open ends, several people with knowledge of the device told The New York Times.
A Christmas tree light with a broken bulb was used as the initiator, which ignited the match heads when the bulb was turned on, one of the people told the Times. That was accomplished with a 9-volt battery, the person said.
The explosion blew one or both caps off the length of pipe, one of the people said, but did not blast the length of pipe apart and turn it into shrapnel.
The suspect suffered burns on his hands and abdomen and was in serious condition at Bellevue Hospital Center, according to Daniel Nigro, commissioner of the New York Fire Department.
Ullah told investigators that he chose the location because of its Christmas-themed posters, recalling strikes in Europe against Christmas markets, and that he set off the bomb in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and elsewhere, several law enforcement officials said.
Officials said Ullah was inspired by the Islamic State but apparently did not have any direct contact with the group. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there was no evidence, so far, of other bombs or a larger plot. He said officials were exploring whether Ullah had been on authorities' radar but had seen no indication that he was.
Authorities were searching Ullah's residence, pursuant to a federal warrant, a law enforcement official said. The attack is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is made up largely of FBI agents and New York detectives, along with investigators from a score of other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Ullah came to the U.S. in 2011 on an F-4 visa, available for those with family in the U.S. who are citizens, the Department of Homeland Security said. He had been licensed to drive a livery cab between 2012 and 2015, but the license was allowed to lapse, according to law enforcement officials and the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Ullah lived with his father, mother and brother in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Bangladeshi community, residents said.
In Washington, President Donald Trump said the explosion highlighted the need to change immigration policies, including the F-4 visa. Such visas are "incompatible with national security," Trump said in a statement.
"America must fix its lax immigration system, which allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country," said Trump, who campaigned on cracking down on immigration.
Trump's administration has called for a "merit-based" immigration system that would limit family-based green cards to spouses and minors. White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the proposed policy would have kept Ullah out of the U.S.
"If his policy had been in place, then the attacker would not have come into the country," Sanders said at her daily White House press briefing.
COMMUTER CHAOS
The Times Square-42nd Street subway station is the city's busiest, with 64 million riders passing through every year. The subway system as a whole carried over 1.7 billion people last year.
"Our lives revolve around the subway," de Blasio said. "The choice of New York is always for a reason, because we are a beacon to the world. And we actually show that a society of many faiths and many backgrounds can work."
"The terrorists want to undermine that," he added. "They yearn to attack New York City."
The attack roiled commutes across the region. All subway lines were directed to skip 42nd Street stops, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Port Authority was evacuated for about three hours.
All morning, thwarted travelers spilled into the streets of Times Square, towing suitcases in bewildered silence. They gathered at police cordons stretched across 42nd Street, filming a scene of organized chaos as scores of emergency vehicles arrived at the scene every few minutes.
Christina Bethea was in the underground walkway, headed to her job as a security guard, when the explosion nearly knocked her over. She did not see where the blast came from, she said.
"As soon as we heard 'boom!' we began to run," she said. An hour after the attack, she stood outside the Port Authority, calling her mother and father in North Carolina to tell them she was OK. "I feel good," Bethea said. "I am alive."
Roxanne Malaspina, an employee in Bloomberg LP's legal department, had just gotten off a train when she heard the explosion and joined a crowd running farther into the station to catch a train away from the area.
"It created a little bit of a panic in that underground passageway," Malaspina said. "It's not like normal commuter chaos."
John Frank, 54, was standing on 42nd Street by the Port Authority exit when he felt tremors through the pavement. "That's how strong it was," he said.
He stood on Eighth Avenue a few blocks away on Monday morning, shaken, leaning on a garbage pail for support. "In New York City, we are vulnerable to a lot of things," he said. "These incidents are happening too frequently."
The attack was the second on New Yorkers in six weeks, coming after a man in a rented truck drove up a crowded bike path on Halloween, killing eight people. Authorities said that attack was carried out by an Uzbek immigrant who admired the Islamic State.
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah Maslin Nir, Jonah Engel Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum of The New York Times; by Henry Goldman, Jordyn Holman, Erin Zlomek Chris Dolmetsch and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News; and by Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Jake Pearson, Kiley Armstrong, Larry Neumeister, David James Jeans, Michael Balsamo, Matt Pennington and Rhonda Shafner of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/12/2017