UN employee questioned over British Consulate explosion

FBI and police were questioning a United Nations employee today after two makeshift grenades exploded outside a building housing the British Consulate.

Officials stressed that it was not clear whether the consulate itself had been targeted in the attack, which caused slight damage but injuring no-one. The midtown Manhattan office building houses a variety of domestic and foreign companies.

“We do not at this point have any idea who did it or a motive,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, adding the explosion was caused by “a relatively unsophisticated explosive device.” There were no threats or phone calls, he said.

The FBI and police were questioning a United Nations employee from the Netherlands who was found loitering near the building shortly after the explosion, law enforcement sources said. The sources would not say whether or not the man was a suspect.

The grenades had been placed inside a cement flower box outside the front door of the building.

After piecing together the shrapnel, police determined the devices were toy grenades that had been filled with gunpowder. Officers estimated that one was the size of a pineapple; the other the size of a lemon.

No timing device was used, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The blasts, which Kelly said happened around 3.35am local time (8.35am Irish time), shattered a panel of glass in the building’s front door and ripped a 30-centimetre chunk from the plant pot.

“I heard a bang, that’s it,” said witness Ferdinand Pretd. “I came outside to check it out and I see nothing around, no flames, no smoke and that’s it.”

The British consulate is on the 9th and 10th floors of the building, the mayor said. He said he expected it would be open for business later in the day.

Offices of other foreign diplomatic representatives were checked as a precaution and nothing was found, Kelly said. Security videos in the area were being reviewed, he said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman, asked whether British authorities believed the blast was terrorism-related, said only: “Investigations are ongoing.”

“We’re not speculating about whether it’s connected to the election,” she added. Calls to the British Embassy in Washington were not immediately returned.

The 14-storey glass and metal building, on the east side of midtown Manhattan less than a mile from the United Nations headquarters, has retail shops on the lower level.

The closure of streets around the site caused some rush hour disruptions. For a few hours, trains on one subway line skipped the stop close to the site.

In Chicago, the third-largest US city after New York and Los Angeles, police closed a portion of Michigan Avenue near the British Consulate for about 30 minutes to search the area as a precaution, police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said.