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Boston Bombing Suspect Detained, Questions Remain

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A suspect of the deadly Boston Marathon bombings has been nabbed, authorities announced, wrapping up a day-long manhunt.

At a new conference before a cheering crowd, superintendent of Massachusetts State Police Col. Timothy Alben said, “We are eternally grateful for the outcome tonight. We have a suspect in custody.”

The arrest came after a massive manhunt that saw the city of Boston locked down. Just after the authorities announced that they were lifting the lockdown, a resident in Watertown, a suburb of Boston where most of the operation took place, alerted police of blood on a boat in the backyard of his house, Xinhua reported.

“There was a call that came in to the Watertown Police,” Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. “He saw blood on the boat in the backyard. He opened the tarp and saw a man covered with blood. He retreated and called us.”

Police officers and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents rushed to the scene and found Tsarnaev, a suspected bomber in Monday’s deadly blasts at the Boston Marathon finish line, he added.

The officers then “set up a perimeter around the boat and, over the course of the next hour or so, exchanged gunfire” with the suspect, Davis said.

A hostage negotiation team from the FBI eventually “removed the suspect,” who was in “serious condition,” he said, without providing further details.

Davis also said the FBI had earlier in the day taken three more people into custody in connection to the bombings.

Despite the detainment, “there are still many unanswered questions,” such as what motivated the bombers and who helped them, US President Barack Obama said in a televised statement from the White House shortly after the detainment.

“Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks?” Obama added.

The manhunt for Tsarnaev started late Thursday when his elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, also a bombing suspect, was killed in an overnight shootout with police.

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