A suspect is being hunted over the Manhattan and New Jersey bombings as the public are warned he could be "armed and dangerous".

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has named the man as 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami - a New Jersey resident and a naturalised US citizen from Afghanistan.

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The development in the fast-moving investigation came after five devices were found in the New Jersey city of Elizabeth, one of which exploded as a bomb squad robot tried to disable it.

Image: Ahmad Khan Rahami

The discovery followed a series of attacks in the US over the weekend, with explosions in Manhattan and New Jersey, and a knife attack in Minnesota.


The authorities have now linked the explosive devices in both New York and New Jersey.

Mr de Blasio said of Rahami: "We need to get this guy in right away.

"My experience is one the FBI zeroes in on someone, they will get them."

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Investigators also think that Rahami was not acting alone, but do not know who the others are.

Rahami was not on US anti-terrorism databases, according to officials.

Meanwhile, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, having previously ruled out a link between the Manhattan bombing and international terrorism, has now acknowledged "it may be foreign related".

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The naming of the chief suspect in the New York and New Jersey attacks came as FBI agents raided an apartment linked to Rahami above a fried chicken outlet in Elizabeth, close to where the devices were found late on Sunday.

Five men have already been detained and questioned over Saturday's bomb attack in the busy Manhattan district of Chelsea, after the FBI stopped "a vehicle of interest" in Brooklyn on Sunday night.

It has been reported the bomb that detonated in Manhattan, and another unexploded device found nearby, were both shrapnel-filled pressure cookers, similar to those used in the attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013.

The string of attacks began on Saturday morning after a small pipe bomb exploded in the New Jersey town of Seaside Park, shortly before a charity run for US marines and sailors. No one was injured.

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The devices in Elizabeth contained in a backpack and left in a bin were discovered after two men "saw wires and a pipe".

Mr Cuomo said while the bombs discovered in Manhattan and New Jersey were not identical, there were "certain commonalities" among the chemicals and technologies used.

The security alert came as nearly a thousand extra police were deployed on New York's streets as world leaders met for a UN summit on the refugee crisis.