NEW YORK (AFP) — A small explosion struck a military recruiting station in New York's Times Square in the early hours of Thursday, causing minor damage and disruption but no injuries, police said.
The blast occurred shortly before 4 am (0900 GMT) and shattered windows and buckled the door of the small booth, a frequent focus of anti-war demonstrations and one of the most public faces of the US military.
Behind the shattered window, the blast exposed a familiar World War I recruitment poster featuring Uncle Sam and the words "I Want You For US Army."
The explosion sparked an immediate and large police response -- one of the legacies of the September 11 attacks six years ago, since when the city has been on a constant and heightened state of alert.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the blast was the result of an improvised explosive device that could have caused serious injury or even proved fatal.
"This was not a particularly sophisticated device, it was a low-order explosive in an ammunition box," readily available in military surplus stores, he told reporters from the scene of the explosion.
He added that while a witness had seen a hooded individual cycling around the station wearing a backpack shortly before the blast, no-one had seen the device being planted or thrown at the recruitment center.
The Department of Homeland Security was swift to say there was no information to suggest an imminent threat to the United States after the blast.
The White House said the explosion "doesn't appear to be terrorism," adding that it was closely following the investigation.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg condemned the attack and said the city would not be intimidated.
"The fact that this appears deliberately directed at the recruiting station insults every one of our brave men and women in uniform stationed around the world fighting to defend our freedoms," he told reporters.
"New York City is back and open for business," he insisted. "This city is safe, the police department has kept the city safe."
"People are going about their business... they are not intimidated. Whoever the coward was that committed this disgraceful act on our city will be found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law," he told reporters.
One witness told CNN television she had felt the blast from the 44th floor of a nearby building.
The scene was closed off to pedestrians for several hours after the blast as forensic teams and bomb squad officers scoured the site. Dozens of emergency vehicles were at the scene, and a police helicopter hovered overhead.
However, traffic was being allowed through Times Square, affectionately known as "the crossroads of the world," and subway services, shortly suspended after the blast, were back to normal, sparing the city rush-hour chaos.
The recruitment station has frequently been the focus of demonstrations protesting US-led military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A recruiting center has been on the site since just after World War II, in 1946, although the current structure, a glass building around the size of a tall truck, is its third incarnation.
Bloomberg said the recruiting station was deliberately in an accessible, although exposed, position and there were no plans to change its location.
"The high profile of being in Times Square is exactly what we try to do," he said. "We're pleased to have the recruiting station here."
Last October, a crude bomb exploded outside the Mexican Consulate in New York, shattering windows, while in 2005, two powerful devices exploded outside the British Consulate in Midtown Manhattan, again shattering windows.
Both explosions occurred, like Thursday's blast, shortly before 4:00 am.
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