Jennifer Huynh - Bomber Strikes Near Times Square, Disrupting City but Killing None

Summary: A would-be suicide attacker detonated a pipe bomb strapped to his body in the heart of Manhattan’s busiest subway corridor on Monday, sending thousands of terrified commuters fleeing the smoke-choked passageways, and bringing the heart of Midtown to a standstill as hundreds of police officers converged on Times Square and the surrounding streets. But the makeshift weapon failed to fully detonate, and the attacker himself was the only one seriously injured in the blast, which unfolded just before 7:20 a.m. Law enforcement officials said the attacker, identified by the police as Akayed Ullah, 27, chose the location because of its Christmas-themed posters, a motive that recalled strikes in Europe, and he told investigators that he set off his bomb in retaliation for United States airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria and elsewhere. It was the third attack in New York City since September 2016, and the second in two months, coming only weeks after eight people were killed in a truck attack along a Hudson River bike path. Like the earlier two, the attack on Monday appears to have been carried out by a so-called “lone-wolf” terrorist.

Analysis: This article in The New York Times talks about the "attempted terrorist attack" which took place in New York. The explosion on Monday morning echoed through the subway tunnels just off Times Square and filled parts of the Port Authority Bus Terminal with smoke as commuters fled. Even as smoke still filled the chamber, Mr. Ullah was subdued by Port Authority police officers. After he was subdued, Mr. Ullah 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. An immigrant from Bangladesh, Mr. Ullah came to live in Brooklyn through a visa program available to people who have relatives who are United States citizens. On Monday afternoon, in his first remarks on the attack, President Trump assailed the current immigration system that allows for extended family members, and not just spouses or minor children, to receive green cards. The method of attack — self-detonation, or the attempt at least — introduces something of a new element to a long history of the city as target, a place that has yet somehow avoided the bomb-wearing attackers that are the hallmark of terrorism in places like Israel and Nigeria. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, there have been about 26 terrorist plots against the city that officials have identified as being thwarted “through intelligence, investigation and interdiction,” John J. Miller, the Police Department’s commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a news conference on Monday.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/nyregion/explosion-times-square.html