US investigators hunt New York car bomb culprits

New York: Investigators combed through security video and other evidence on Monday in the hunt for suspects in a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square and officials expressed optimism that the culprits will be found.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said a white man in his 40s was spotted in security video footage about half a block from where the vehicle was left on Saturday evening with its engine running and hazard lights flashing.

In about 19 seconds of video released by police, the man, who appears to be thin, is seen removing a dark shirt, stuffing it into some sort of bag and walking away down the sidewalk, carrying the bag and glancing at least twice over his shoulder.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no evidence of a link to al Qaeda or any other militant organization in the failed bomb attack that prompted the evacuation of the teeming entertainment and shopping district.

"It's unfortunate that this happened. I'm confident that we will find out who did it," Bloomberg told reporters outside a Times Square restaurant.

Bloomberg had dinner with policeman Wayne Rhatigan, who was tipped off by an alert street vendor about a suspicious Nissan sport utility vehicle on West 45th Street near Broadway.

The Taliban in Pakistan said it planted the bomb to avenge the killing in April of al Qaida's two top leaders in Iraq. But Kelly said there was "no evidence" to support that claim.

Investigators were poring over surveillance camera footage and a device made of propane, gasoline and fireworks after officers found the bomb in the vehicle as Times Square in Midtown Manhattan was packed with tourists and theater-goers.

In addition to that footage, Kelly said a tourist passerby had contacted police to say he too "may have got a picture of the individual" caught in the frame while he was filming a nearby mounted policeman.

Kelly said there was another lead being probed in an email sent to an unidentified US media organization.

He also said that experts still had a huge amount of camera footage to pore over.

"It's not easy to go through these tapes. I think we had 82 cameras in the area.... We've looked at 30 of those cameras. Three of them had some value," Kelly said.

However, he dismissed a claim by a Pakistani Taliban group that it was responsible.

"Although a Taliban bomb maker has claimed on the Internet... we have no evidence to support this claim," Kelly said.

'Whatever is necessary'

President Barack Obama received regular updates on the incident as he visited Louisiana to assess the response to the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We're going to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people, to determine who's behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done," said Obama, who was accompanied on the trip by his counterterrorism chief John Brennan.