Developments in Boston

Boston lockdown: Huge manhunt as Swat teams join 9,000 police in search for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after shootout leaves his brother Tamerlan and MIT police officer dead

Thousands of officers involved in extraordinary citywide hunt for brothers who led police in high-speed chase into suburbs

the Independent,

19 April, 2013

The sprawling Boston metropolitan area is in lockdown today as thousands of officers from state and federal law enforcement agencies mount a massive manhunt for one of the two suspects in the marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 170 on Monday.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, escaped after the other suspect, his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan, was killed in the early hours of this morning following a high-speed car chase along the Charles River that ended in the suburban community of Watertown. Earlier, the two suspects, immigrants of Chechen origin who lived next door in Cambridge, fatally shot campus police officer Sean Collier, who was responding to a report of a robbery at a convenience store on the grounds of the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology.

Watertown, just across the river from Boston, is at the centre of the search involving some 9,000 officers from local and state police, the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies. Authorities have cordoned off an area spanning some 20 blocks as they hunt for the suspect, whom officers fear may have explosives. His brother was found with an explosive device strapped to his body.

In the wider area, the manhunt has paralyzed Boston and the surrounding towns. Public transportation is suspended, and numerous schools, universities and businesses are closed as national attention turns to the chase. At the suspects’ family home in Cambridge’s Norfolk Street, bomb disposal experts are due to carry out a controlled explosion in the afternoon after sweeping the scene through the morning.

Tensions in Watertown, meanwhile, are running high as officials go house by house in their search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Residents were woken by phones calls from the emergency services advising them not to answer the door unless they were visited by police officers bearing proper identification.

Heavily armed officers could be seen making their way in and out of the exclusion zone, while military helicopters hovered over the buildings.

On Thursday night, hours after the FBI released images and a video of the two suspects, the duo attempted to rob a convenience store and shot a campus officer, Sean Collier, before stealing a car. Along with the car, they also took a hostage, who was released unharmed after around 30 minutes. The shootout that led to the death of one of the suspects also resulted in the injury of a transit officer, who was in surgery today. No motive has yet been identified for the brothers’ actions.

The brothers’ uncle has implored Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to turn himself in and “ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured”.

Speaking outside his home in Maryland, Ruslan Tsarni said: “Somebody radicalised them, but it was not my brother.”

He said his family had been estranged from the suspects for many years. When asked by reporters why he thought the brothers had acted they way they did, he said: “Being losers, not being able to settle themselves, and thereby just hating everyone who did.” Of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, he added: “He put a shame on our family. He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity.”

As the hunt continued, the Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said people around the Boston metropolitan area, which has a population of more than 4 million, should “remain indoors”. “Keep the doors locked,” he added.