A car sought by Connecticut State Police and believed to be occupied by a possible suspect linked to the Boston Marathon bombing has been located in the Boston area, a police spokesman said on Friday.
The car was described as a gray Honda CRV with Massachusetts license plates.
Massachusetts officials said that police are engaged in a "massive manhunt" in the
continuing search for one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing and asked
residents to stay inside.
At a news conference, Massachusetts
Governor Deval Patrick said police are telling all residents in Boston and
several surrounding communities to "shelter in place," meaning they
should lock their doors and not open to anyone except properly identified law
enforcement.
Earlier, two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing killed a university police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of them dead and another still at large Friday, authorities said as the manhunt intensified for a young man described as a dangerous terrorist.
The suspects were identified to The Associated Press as coming from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars. A law enforcement intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP identified the surviving bomb suspect as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old who had been living in Cambridge, just outside Boston, and said he "may be armed and dangerous."
Two law enforcement officials told the AP that Tsarnaev and the other suspect, who was not immediately identified, had been living legally in the U.S. for at least one year. The Federal Aviation Administration closed airspace over a 7-mile-wide (11 km) stretch of the northwest Boston area on Friday to provide a "safe environment for law-enforcement activities" as police searched for a second Boston Marathon bomb suspect.
In Boston, still on edge over the attack on the marathon, and its western suburbs, authorities suspended mass transit and urged people to stay indoors as they searched for the remaining suspect, a man seen wearing a white baseball cap on surveillance footage from Monday's deadly bombing at the marathon finish line.
The suspects' clashes with police began only a few hours after the FBI released photos and videos of the two young men, who were seen carrying backpacks as they mingled among marathon revelers. The bombings on Monday killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, and authorities revealed the images to enlist the public's help finding the suspects.
Authorities said surveillance tape recorded late Thursday showed the suspect known for the white hat during a robbery of a convenience store in Cambridge, near the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a university police officer was killed while responding to a report of a disturbance, said State Police Col Timothy Alben. The officer died of multiple gunshot wounds.
From there, authorities say, the two men carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz, keeping him with them in the car for half an hour before releasing him at a gas station in Cambridge. The man was not injured.
The search for the vehicle led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer was seriously injured during the chase, authorities said.
The suspects' images were released hours after President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended an interfaith service in Boston to remember the dead and the wounded.
At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Obama saluted the resolve of the people of Boston and mocked the bombers as "these small, stunted individuals who would destroy instead of build and think somehow that makes them important."
"We will find you," he warned.
In the past, insurgents from Chechnya and neighboring restive provinces in the Caucasus have been involved in terror attacks in Moscow and other places in Russia.
Chechen insurgents also launched a 2004 hostage-taking raid in the southern Russian town of Beslan, where they took hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later, with more than 330 people, about half of them children, killed.
Insurgents from Chechnya and other regions also have launched a long series of bombings in Moscow and other cities in Russia. An explosion at the international arrivals hall at Moscow's Domodedovo airport in January 2011 killed at least 31 people and wounded more than 140.
Pro-Moscow Chechen leader blames
U.S. for Boston bombing
The Russian-installed leader of
Chechnya criticized U.S. police on Friday for killing an ethnic Chechen
suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing and blamed the violence
on his upbringing in the United States.
"The root of evil should be looked for
in the United States," Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments posted online
after the police shot dead Tamerlan
Tsarnaev and hunted for his brother Dzhokhar, his suspected accomplice.
"They (the brothers) grew up and
studied in the United States and their attitudes and beliefs were formed
there," Kadyrov said. "Any attempt to make a connection between
Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs is in vain."
Kadyrov, a tough pro-Kremlin leader whose
security services have been accused of human rights abuses such as kidnappings
and torture, questioned why the U.S. police had not been able to arrest
Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
"Apparently the special services
needed a result by whatever means to
appease society," he said.
Positions:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says "we are part of the way there"
in finding those responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing and
bringing them to justice.
Kerry added that "terror anywhere in the world against any country is
unacceptable, and we need to continue to stand up and fight against
it."
For its part, Russia condemns all "terrorists" regardless of their nationality, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Friday after U.S. police shot dead a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing who once lived in Russia.
"They all deserve to be rejected," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in the southern Russian city of Sochi, adding that the Russian authorities were waiting for official information from the United States on the dead man and a suspected accomplice.
AP/REUTERS
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