Police Find Car Bomb in NYC Times Square

A police vehicle moves along 44th street near Times Square in New York Sunday, May 2, 2010, as an investigation was underway after an earlier incident involving a car that contained cans of gasoline, tanks of propane and fireworks

Craig Ruttle / AP

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(NEW YORK) — Police found an "amateurish" but potentially powerful bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square, authorities said Sunday.

Thousands of tourists were cleared from the streets for 10 hours after two vendors alerted police to the suspicious vehicle, which contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

"We avoided what could have been a very deadly event," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact." (See pictures of Times Square's car bomb.)

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the failed car bomb attack in Times Square in New York City.

In 1 minute video allegedly released by the Pakistani Taliban, the group says the attack is revenge for the death of its leader Baitullah Mehsud and the recent killings of the top leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Images of the slain militants are shown as an unidentified voice recites the message. English subtitles are at the bottom of the screen.

The video was uncovered Sunday by the U.S.-based SITE intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites.

The bomb appeared to be starting to detonate but malfunctioned, top police spokesman Paul Browne said Sunday. Firefighters and witnesses said they heard a popping sound from inside the vehicle.

Bloomberg called the explosive device "amateurish" but potentially deadly, noting: "We are very lucky."

The NYPD bomb squad "has seen sophisticated devices before and they described this one as crude," Browne said. "But it was nevertheless lethal." If detonated properly, it could have created a large fireball and sprayed shrapnel — metal from the propane tanks and car parts — that could have killed pedestrians in the immediate vicinity, Browne said.

Police on Sunday were trying to determine whether a gun locker also discovered in the vehicle was part of the threat.

The metal storage cabinet for rifles weighed roughly 200 pounds, causing suspicion it could contain more powerful explosives meant to be detonated by the fireball, Browne said. Investigators had isolated the locker at a police firing range in the Bronx and were trying to open it remotely to determine what's inside.

No suspects were in custody, though Kelly said a surveillance video showed the car driving west on 45th Street before it parked between Seventh and Eighth avenues. Police were looking for more video from office buildings that weren't open at the time. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2009.)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that officials are treating the incident as a potential terrorist attack. The mayor said earlier Sunday that "we have no idea who did this or why" but said pointed out that the city is a frequent target of terrorism.

"These things invariably ... come back to New York," Bloomberg said.

A T-shirt vendor and a handbag vendor alerted police at about 6:30 p.m, the height of dinner hour before theatergoers head to Saturday night shows.

Smoke was coming from the back of the dark-colored Pathfinder, its hazard lights were on and "it was just sitting there," said Rallis Gialaboukis, 37, another vendor who has hawked his wares for 20 years across the street.

Duane Jackson, a 58-year-old handbag vendor from Buchanan, N.Y., said he noticed the car at around 6:30 p.m. and wondered who had left it there.

"That was my first thought: Who sat this car here?" Jackson said Sunday. (See the world's most influential people in the 2010 TIME 100.)

Jackson said he looked in the car and saw keys in the ignition with 19 or 20 keys on a ring.

He said he alerted a passing mounted police officer.

"That's when the smoke started coming out and then we heard the little pop pop pop like firecrackers going out and that's when everybody scattered and ran back," he said.

"Now that I saw the propane tanks and the gasoline, what if that would have ignited?" Jackson said. "I'm less than 8 feet away from the car. We dodged a bullet here."

He didn't think the car had been there for more than 10 or 15 minutes.

A white robotic police arm broke windows of the SUV to remove any explosive materials. A Connecticut license plate on the vehicle did not match up, Bloomberg said. Police interviewed the Connecticut car owner, who told them he had sent the plates to a nearby junkyard, Bloomberg said.

The SUV was towed early Sunday to a forensic lab in Queens, where it was being "thoroughly checked for prints, hairs and fibers," Browne said Sunday. Napolitano said fingerprints had been recovered from the vehicle.

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