American authorities are searching for an American man of Pakistani descent who they say purchased the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder used in a botched Times Square bomb attack.
Two officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the man is a Connecticut resident who recently visited Pakistan.
Weeks ago, he paid in cash for the SUV that police found parked, smoking, in Times Square on Saturday evening. It was loaded with a crude bomb of gasoline, propane tanks and fireworks that had apparently failed to fully detonate.
Investigators interrogated the vehicle's registered owner on Sunday. They didn't identify her but an official, speaking anonymously, said she had sold the SUV to a stranger three weeks ago. Reports suggest the vehicle was sold online, with advertisements on NothingButCars.net and Craigslist.
The vehicle's owner was traced to Connecticut using the vehicle registration number on its engine. The licence plate on the same vehicle has been traced to a different vehicle in a repair shop in the same state.
Meanwhile, police are also looking for a middle-aged white man who was spotted in security footage removing his shirt near the SUV that was carrying the bomb.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged the man to come forward, saying he may not be a suspect, but instead may have valuable information.
The surveillance video, made public Sunday night, shows an unidentified man in an alley taking off his shirt, revealing another shirt underneath. He looks back in the direction of the SUV, and puts his shirt in a bag.
Bloomberg said there is a "high-probability" police will apprehend those behind the car bomb.
"Working with White House, working with Homeland Security, working with the FBI, all city agencies working together, there's a high probability that we will find out who did this and apprehend them," Bloomberg said.
Bomb 'amateurish'
The gasoline-and-propane bomb would have been powerful enough to rip the SUV in half and cause a "significant fireball," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Sunday.
While the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the bomb, Kelly said that was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
"New York officials really believe this is not Taliban-related and are saying it's probably only one person involved here, maybe two," ABC's Linsey Davis told Canada AM Monday morning from New York.
Homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano called the incident a "one-off."
The Pathfinder was photographed crossing an intersection at 6:28 p.m. Saturday. Within two minutes, a T-shirt vendor pointed out the vehicle to a police officer because it was smoking.
The explosive device found in the vehicle featured cheap alarm clocks connected to a can of fireworks. It appeared the fireworks were intended to set off the gas can and cause a chain reaction to the propane tanks stored in the vehicle.
"There were lots of things that could ignite, that could cause a bomb and could cause damage," said CTV's Washington Bureau Chief Paul Workman. "But they weren't put together well, which does seem to suggest it was a very crude effort, it was not someone who had been trained in bomb-making by an outside group like al Qaeda, or others."
"That seems to lead the police and various other experts to think that it was just somebody who was out to cause trouble but really didn't know exactly what he was doing."
There was also a fertilizer-like substance found in the vehicle, but police say it appears it was not of a type capable of exploding.
The SUV was parked near the headquarters of Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central. The cable TV network recently aired an episode of "South Park," which the radical group Revolution Muslim complained about because it featured the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.
With files from The Associated Press
