Did New York terror suspect act alone?
New York mayor calls rampage that killed 8, act of terror
POLICE sought yesterday to determine what pushed a pick-up driver to mow down cyclists and pedestrians here, killing eight in the city’s first deadly “act of terror” since Sept 11, 2001.
The man, reportedly an Uzbek national, struck in broad daylight just blocks from the 9/11 Memorial, in an upscale neighbourhood on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, close to schools as children and their parents geared up to celebrate Halloween.
Television footage showed the mangled wreckage of the pick-up truck, bicycles crushed to smithereens and bodies wrapped in sheets and lying on the ground.
Tuesday’s truck rampage bore similarities to attacks in Europe that have been claimed by the Islamic State group, but the terrorist organisation had yet to do so in this case and authorities had not ascribed a motive, nor publicly identified the attacker.
However, the attacker left a note saying he carried out the attack in the name of IS, the New York Times and CNN said.
“This was an act of terror and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.
“An investigation is under way to get all the facts.”
Five of the eight killed were Argentine nationals, part of a group visiting the city from Rosario for a school reunion, the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires said.
Brussels said a Belgian woman on a trip with her mother and
sister was also killed.
Eleven people, including an Argentine and three Belgians, were wounded and taken to hospital.
Law enforcement sources identified the perpetrator as Sayfullo Saipov, 29.
The Uzbek citizen living in Tampa, Florida, had been staying in New Jersey, where the truck was rented, reports said.
Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev yesterday offered to help United States authorities in their investigation, but did not officially confirm the identity or nationality of the attacker.
President Donald Trump denounced the attacker as “very sick” and a “deranged person”.
Confronting what could be the most serious terror-related incident since taking power less than a year ago, Trump used it to forward his political agenda, announcing that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to step up his “extreme vetting programme” on foreign travellers to the country.
The US “must not” allow IS jihadists
to “return, or enter” the country after being defeated overseas, Trump said, albeit as officials declined to link the assailant to a specific group.
Police said the attacker drove a rented Home Depot pick-up down a bike and pedestrian lane before colliding with a school bus, wounding two adults and two children.
The suspect then exited the vehicle brandishing weapons that were identified as a paintball gun and pellet gun, before being shot by a police officer and taken into custody, police said.
He was later operated on and was expected to survive, US networks reported.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations and New York police urged members of the public to come forward with any information that could assist the investigation, which the mayor said preliminary information suggested was a lone-wolf assault.
Heavily-armed police fanned out across the city of 8.5 million, home to Wall Street, Broadway and one of the biggest tourist draws in the US.
A planned Halloween parade went ahead as scheduled, albeit under tight security and a large police presence, as State Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the new World Trade Center to be lit red, white and blue “in honour of freedom and democracy”.
The attack was the first deadly terror-related incident in the city since al-Qaeda brought down the Twin Towers, killing more than 2,700 people on 9/11.
Attacks with vehicles — a method recommended by IS in 2014 — have left dozens of people dead in various European countries since the middle of last year.
The New York truck attack came 12 months after a pipe bomb exploded in September last year in the Chelsea neighbourhood, lightly wounding 31 people. An American of Afghan descent, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, was convicted of terrorism on Oct 16 in relation to that attack. Agencies
Page 1 pic: Police examining a vehicle allegedly used in a ramming incident in Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday.