Ahmad Khan Rahami on a stretcher after a shootout (REUTERS)

NEW YORK — Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28-year-old man suspected for an explosion in New York and New Jersey is in custody following a shootout with police on Monday morning.

Rahami was taken to a hospital on a stretcher with a bandaged and bloodied right shoulder. An officer was shot in the vest and another in the hand, said the mayor of city nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey, where the shootout took place.

Rahami, a New Jersey resident and U.S. citizen of Afghani descent, was identified after a man hunt, suspected for connections to a bombing Saturday night in a Chelsea, New York neighborhood that wounded 29 people, and another that exploded in a garbage can near a Marine Corps charity in New Jersey.

Investigators speculate the attacks come from a terror active terrorism cell could be at work in the New York and New Jersey area.

As police investigated, a backpack carrying several unexploded pipe bombs were found inside a trash can in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The package was detected three blocks away when a Bomb squad canvased all garbage cans in the area for “secondary” bombs immediatly after the first explosion.

Rahamai has been placed on a terrorist watch and no-fly list.

The series of attacks come as New York hosts world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the bombs found over the weekend have similarities, suggesting “there might have been a common linkage.” While the investigation is ongoing, Cuomo said he “wouldn’t be surprised if it zeroes in on a particular individual, today even,” and he “wouldn’t be surprised if we found a foreign connection to the act.”

A federal law enforcement official said BBs and ball bearings were among the pieces of metal that appeared to be packed into two pressure cooker bombs in New York. One of those devices exploded on 23rd Street, but the fact that it was partly under a metal trash container may have diminished the force of the blast.