NEW YORK (JTA) — The suspect in a pipe bomb attack on this city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal said he was motivated by Israeli actions in Gaza, CNN reported.
Akayed Ullah spoke with authorities at Bellevue Hospital, where he was taken after the bomb went off prematurely. He was among four people injured in the attack when his homemade bomb partially detonated in a tunnel connecting the Times Square subway station with the Midtown Manhattan transit hub during Monday’s morning rush hour.
New York Police identified Ullah, 27, as a resident of Brooklyn. He is said to be of Bangladeshi origin and has lived in the United States for the past seven years. CNN cited a “law enforcement source” who said Ullah said he was upset with an unspecified “incursion into Gaza.”
On Friday, rockets fired at southern Israel from Gaza damaged the entrance of an empty kindergarten in the town of Sderot. Israel responded late Friday night with airstrikes on Hamas military installations in Gaza that killed two Hamas operatives.
On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces discovered and demolished a terror tunnel that crossed into Israel from central Gaza.
“He detonated the bomb, the explosive chemical in the bomb went off, it did not have the desired affect of causing the pipe itself to shatter, which would’ve caused the more significant damage,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on MSNBC.
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