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The terrorist suspect who used a rented truck to kill eight people and injure 12 in the Manhattan attack had been planning the incident for weeks and followed Islamic State guidelines “to a T”, New York police said on Wednesday.

As the twisted and gnarled truck that was used to plough down unsuspecting tourists and cyclists remained parked on the spot where it had come to a halt on Tuesday afternoon, FBI and NYPD officers fanned out across the city and through neighboring New Jersey. They were armed with search warrants relating to Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old Uzbek-born suspect who was shot in the stomach and who is still under guard in stable condition at the city’s Bellevue hospital.

At a press conference on Wednesday, police and city authorities revealed vivid details of items that were found at the scene of the worst terrorist incident that New York has suffered since 9/11. Inside the truck, notes were found handwritten in Arabic proclaiming that “Islamic State would endure for ever”. A number of knives were scattered around the vehicle, as were two dummy guns.

Police said the aim now was to “peel back” Saipov’s communications to reconstruct his every move, day by day. They would be interviewing relatives and friends, collecting footage from security cameras along the route of the attack, scouring Saipov’s family home where he was living with his wife and three children in Paterson, New Jersey, as well as searching the rented Home Depot truck and his own white van left at the rental location.

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