Pipe bombs found near train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey

ELIZABETH (New Jersey) — Tensions across the New York region were heightened on Sunday (Sept 18) night after a law enforcement official confirmed that pipe bombs had been found near the train station here.

Earlier in the evening, the mayor, J. Christian Bollwage, said that a suspicious package had been found that “could be a bomb.”

It was not yet known whether the package found in Elizabeth had any connection to the bomb that injured 29 people in New York on Saturday night, as well as another bomb nearby that failed to detonate, or to the bomb that went off on Saturday morning in Seaside Park, New Jersey. There were no injuries.

Around 9.30pm on Sunday, two men found a package that contained a device in a wastebasket near Julian Place and North Broad Street, Bollwage said.

After retrieving the item, the two men walked a short way and then noticed “wires and a pipe,” the mayor said, at which point they dropped the package and contacted the Elizabeth Police Department.

The Elizabeth police, in turn, called the Union County bomb squad, which tested the package with a drone and found that it “could be a live bomb,” Bollwage said. He said the FBI and the New Jersey State Police had been called in to investigate. Bollwage later confirmed that at least one device had exploded while it was being investigated by the authorities. No injuries were reported.

Police cars and yellow tape blocked every car and pedestrian route to the train station in downtown Elizabeth early Monday morning. The town was eerily calm but for the flickering of red and blue police lights on the buildings downtown.

Mr Dean Fage, 49, was walking past police cars and officers at the Elizabeth train station when a bomb went off.

“People were screaming, a woman yelled, ‘What the hell was that?’” he said. “I felt it in my chest. I thought when they find bombs they take them and detonate them somewhere else.”

Mr Bollwage said late Sunday that all trains from New Jersey Transit and Amtrak going through Elizabeth had been shut down and that a shuttle would arrive to shepherd stranded passengers away. More than 2,000 riders were affected.

Amtrak spokesman Craig Schulz said that service would resume “as soon as it is safe to do so.”

In a statement, New Jersey Transit said that all service along the Northeast Corridor and New Jersey Coast lines had been suspended in both directions until further notice.

A spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit, Ms Nancy Snyder, confirmed that rail service had been suspended because of the investigation but could not comment further, as the package had “not been found on our property.”

Early Monday morning, Schulz said that Amtrak trains had been moved into stations so that passengers could disembark and find other ways to travel. He said that refunds or credits would be arranged with customers on a case-by-case basis. THE NEW YORK TIMES