An explosive device left near a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, blew up early on Monday when a bomb squad robot cut a wire on the mechanism, one of as many as five potential bombs found at the site, the city’s mayor said.
No one was injured in the blast.
In Elizabeth, a city south of Newark, New Jersey, two men scavenging trash near the train station on Sunday evening found a suspicious package containing what could have been a live bomb in a wastebasket, said Mayor Christian Bollwage, who tweeted regular updates of the incident.
As many as five potential explosive devices tumbled out of the backpack when it was emptied, Bollwage said. After cordoning off the area, a bomb squad used a robot to cut a wire to try to disable the device, but inadvertently set off an explosion, he said.
The men reported the package to police after they “saw wires and a pipe,” Bollwage told reporters. A Union County bomb squad drone determined the package “could be a live bomb” and an FBI bomb squad was dispatched to the site.
A large explosion was heard early on Monday near the transit station, NBC News reported. On Twitter, Bollwage confirmed that police had detonated the suspicious package. In a subsequent tweet, he confirmed that the explosion followed a police bomb robot’s attempt to disarm the device.
New Jersey Transit Corp and Amtrak halted train services to the Elizabeth station as investigations continued, authorities said.
A powerful explosion rocked Manhattan’s popular Chelsea neighborhood late on Saturday after a pressure-cooker bomb packed with shrapnel detonated. A similar unexploded device was found a few blocks away later that night.
The Chelsea blast followed a pipe bomb explosion on Saturday morning along the route of a running race in the New Jersey beach town of Seaside Park. No one was injured in that blast, which is being investigated.
(With inputs from Reuters.)
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