Suspicious car sparks fresh New York bomb scare

Union Square alert after petrol cans found in vehicle

Published:

A CAR with petrol cans stored in the back sparked a fresh terror scare near New York City’s Union Square early today.

The area was sealed off as bomb squad officers and the city’s Emergency Service Unit investigated the suspicious car, parked near Union Square tube station.

At least one building was evacuated.

But police later removed the petrol cans from the car and nothing suspicious was found.

NYPD officers located the owner of the 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, which was found in front of New York’s Con Edison building.

He told police he had the petrol cans in his car because he mowed lawns for his family. He parked the car in the area because he was attending a concert nearby, police said.

An employee of Con Edison, a New York energy company, reported the car.

Union Square is near Greenwich Village, New York University and the city’s landmark Flatiron building. It sits along a major city route.

The alert came nearly two weeks after the attempted car bomb attack at New York’s Times Square. Pakistan-born US citizen Faisal Shahzad, 30, is accused of trying to blow up a van packed with petrol and propane.

Three Pakistani men said to have supplied funds to Shahzad have been arrested in a series of FBI raids.

The men were arrested as authorities searched homes and businesses in co-ordinated raids.

They were arrested for administrative immigration offences and were not charged with any terror-related crimes. Shahzad, a budget analyst from Bridgeport, Connecticut, returned to the US in February after five months in Pakistan, where authorities say he claimed to have received training in bomb-making.