Authorities have identified a suspect in the New York bombings case as US naturalised Afghan, Ahmad Khan Rahami, aged 28.
Further updates will be reported here
New York Mayor Bill de Blaiso and the New York Police department tweeted the information this evening about the man who is a suspect in the Chelsea bombings that left 29 injured on Saturday.
It is not yet known if he is suspected as having any connection to five other explosive devices found today in New jersey.
The New York Police Department has released a photo of the man and investigators have warned he is "armed and dangerous".
He is described as 5ft 6 tall and as weighing approximately 90 kilograms.
Five more devices found in New jersey
Up to five suspicious devices were found in a backpack in a wastebasket in New Jersey, one of which exploded as bomb experts dealt with it, media and the local mayor said early Monday.
As a robot examined one device it "cut a wire and it exploded," the mayor of the city of Elizabeth, Chris Bollwage, told CNN. No injuries were reported.
Earlier in the evening Bollwage told journalists that two men walking near the train station had seen a package in a waste basket and took it.
After noticing "wires and a pipe," they alerted local police.
A local bomb squad responded to the scene and a drone examination found that "it could be suspicious and it could be a live bomb." FBI and state police were also called to help investigate.
The latest New Jersey investigation is underway amid heightened tensions after a blast in New York's Chelsea neighborhood injured 29 people Saturday, four blocks from the discovery of a second bomb that was defused safely and sent to authorities for examination.
Earlier that day a pipe bomb went off in a trash can on the route of a Marine Corps run before it began on Saturday morning in Seaside Park, New Jersey, causing no injuries but forcing the race's cancellation.
It remains unclear whether the suspicious backpack in Elizabeth was connected to any of those events.
Trains traveling through Elizabeth from New Jersey's local transit line and Amtrak had been suspended, the mayor said.
Authorities say there is no evidence that any of the attacks were coordinated but the timing in less than 24 hours raises fears about security - already a hot button issue in the country's deeply divisive presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Twenty-nine people were injured when a bomb exploded in New York's upmarket Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night, damaging neighboring buildings, shattering glass and sending shrapnel flying across the street.
A second bomb was uncovered by police four blocks away and defused safely, before undergoing analysis.
Hours earlier, less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) south in New Jersey, a pipe bomb exploded in a trash can on the sidelines of a Marine Corps run, causing no injuries but forcing the cancellation of the race.
More than 1,200 miles away to the West, an assailant reported to be Somali-American went on a stabbing spree in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, injuring nine people before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer.
US authorities said the motive of all three attacks was unclear, but elected officials quickly identified them as terror-related.
"If you look at a number of these incidents, you can call them whatever you want -- they are terrorism, though," New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie, a key member of the Trump campaign, told CNN.
WATCH: The moment a powerful blast ripped through a busy part of Chelsea in NYC
'Defeat ISIS'
"A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it's not linked to international terrorism," State Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Sunday after touring the scene of the explosion.
"In other words, we find no ISIS connection, et cetera," said Cuomo in reference to the Islamic State group. But he also stressed the lack of international terror link was preliminary.
There has been no claim for the bombings in Manhattan or New Jersey, but a jihadist-linked news agency claimed that an IS "soldier" carried out the Minnesota stabbing.
IS has repeatedly called for attacks on countries in the US-led coalition bombing the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.
"This should steel our resolve to protect our country and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups," said Clinton, whose lead in the polls has recently taken a dip, condemning what she called "apparent terrorist attacks."
Trump, who called the explosion in New York a bombing more than 12 hours before officials or police did so in public, tweeted his "best wishes and condolences to all of the families and victims of the horrible bombing."
In Minnesota, FBI agent Rick Thornton confirmed that federal agents were investigating the stabbing as "a potential act of terrorism," as local media identified the suspect as a 22-year-old Somali-American.
Police confirmed that the assailant asked some victims whether they were Muslim before attacking them and made "references to Allah."
While all 29 people who were injured in the New York bombing have been released from medical care, three of those hurt in Minnesota remain in hospital, officials said.
NY on alert
US media reported that the New York bomb was planted in a dumpster, but police say they are still not "100 percent" certain where the blast originated with major construction work taking place close by.
"We know it's a very serious incident, but we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this," Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters.
"Was it a political motivation, a personal motivation. What was it? We do not know," he added, calling on residents to be vigilant.
Fifteen years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, officials stress that the United States is safer from terror plots that originate from overseas but more at risk from the lone-wolf attack perpetrated by individuals who may be inspired by IS or Al-Qaeda propaganda.
New York went on alert, deploying nearly 1,000 extra state police and National Guardsmen to airports, bus terminals and subway stations as the city prepared to host world leaders at the UN General Assembly from Monday.
New York lauds itself as the safest big city in America. Violent crime is rare in Manhattan and police say they have foiled 20 terror plots since the 2001 Al-Qaeda plane hijackings destroyed the Twin Towers.
"In many of these cases we don't know until two, three or four days later whether or not there is a terrorist link," New York Congressman Peter King told CBS.
"The fact there is no evidence right now doesn't mean much," he added.
Turnbull urges New Yorkers 'not to be cowed'
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy spoke to commuters on the city’s famous subway, encouraging them "not to be cowed" as police continue to hunt for those responsible for triggering a bomb in the upmarket Manhattan suburb of Chelsea.
“New Yorkers are getting on with their normal lives, it’s business as usual,” Mr Turnbull told reporters gathered near Grand Army Plaza, in the borough of Brooklyn.
“The one thing we cannot do is let people we seek to do us harm, whatever the motivations may be, to cower us.
“We defy them by going about our lives in the normal way.”
