At least 5 people shot at New York City subway station

At least five people were shot and injured Tuesday at a subway station in New York City during a morning rush hour attack that left wounded commuters bleeding on a train platform.

Fire personnel responding to reports of smoke at the 36th Street station in the Sunset Park neighbourhood found multiple people shot as well as un-detonated devices, a fire department spokesperson said.

The fire department told CBC News in an email that 13 people were injured overall, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many people were shot or the specific nature of their injuries.

A New York Police Department spokesperson told CBC News the incident happened just before 8:30 a.m. ET on the R-line subway in the borough.

Police are looking for a suspect described as a Black male. He was described as wearing a Metropolitan Transit Authority uniform and a gas mask, the spokesperson said.

Witness reports chaos, smoke

NYPD said in a tweet they had not found any “active explosive devices.”

A bystander video shows people lying on the subway platform amid what appeared to be small puddles of blood, as a loudspeaker announcement told everyone on the smoke-hazy platform to get on a train. Inside a subway car, a person lay on the floor, encircled by others. Outside the station, a police officer yelled, “Let’s go! Get out of the way!”

“My subway door opened into calamity. It was smoke and blood and people screaming,” eyewitness Sam Carcamo told radio station 1010 WINS, saying he saw a gigantic billow of smoke pouring out of the train once the door opened.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who revealed a positive COVID-19 result on Sunday, is receiving regular briefings on the incident, his press secretary said.

Trains servicing that station were delayed during the morning rush hour.

The New York City subway system has seen a spate of recent attacks. An Asian-American woman was pushed to her death in front of a train at the Times Square subway station in January, while a Staten Island man died last week after a stabbing at Wall Street station.

In connection with a 2017 incident that caused panic at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, a U.S. permanent resident from Bangladesh was sentenced on federal charges last year to life in prison. The man detonated an improvised explosive device, leading to non-life-threatening injuries for several people nearby.