New York, May 2
The police today foiled a major terror attack by defusing an “amateurish” but potentially powerful crude car bomb in the heart of the New York city’s famous tourist hub of Times Square, averting what could have been a “very deadly event” in the US.

“We are very lucky,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a hurriedly organised press conference. “We avoided what could have been a very deadly event,” he said. Traffic was stopped and redirected to the surrounding areas as the police closed down a section of Times Square after a foot patrol officer spotted a parked Nissan Pathfinder around 6.30 pm last evening (4 am ISI, today). He noticed a box inside the vehicle with smoke coming out of it. The car parked in a crowded area was later found to be loaded with a bomb made of electrical components, three propane gas tanks and two additional gas canisters.

Soon after, hotels, shops and restaurants in and around Times Square were shut down and thousands of people evacuated from the area. “The bomb squad confirmed that the suspicious vehicle indeed did contain an explosive device,” Bloomberg said, adding that the bomb was homemade and “looked amateurish.”

Bomb squad personnel in protective gear broke the Pathfinder’s back windows and sent in a ‘robotic device’ to ‘observe’ the device, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman. Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fireworks and two clocks with batteries, New York Times reported.

There were also reports of a man been seeing fleeing the area. Authorities say a Connecticut license plate on the vehicle did not match up. Police are looking for additional surveillance video. President Barack Obama commended the “excellent work” of the New York Police Department (NYPD) for defusing the “bomb crisis”. — PTI