By Dan Satherley / AP
Thousands of people have been evacuated from New York's Times Square, after a burning car was discovered to contain explosives.
A man was seen fleeing the vehicle shortly before it caught fire, around 6:30pm local time.
A mounted police officer soon noticed smoke coming from the SUV, a Nissan Pathfinder. Bomb investigators found propane tanks, powder and an apparent timing device inside. The car was also noted to have fake licence plates.
Police evacuated several residential and commercial buildings and cleared the streets of people. Police were deployed around the area with heavy weapons on empty streets in the heart of midtown Manhattan that normally teem with thousands of theatregoers and tourists.
Watch video of the bomb squad and interviews with NY residents affected by the scare.
Live cameras on Times Square show it to be deserted, with police cars blocking all entrances.
Several theatre performances on Broadway, including The Lion King, have been delayed.
On social networking site Twitter, some users suggested the incident could be linked to recent threats made to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Viacom, owner of Comedy Central which broadcasts the edgy cartoon, has its headquarters in Times Square.
Some tourists reported hearing a small explosion hours after the car was first located.
Shelly Carlisle, of Portland, Oregon, said police crowded into her Broadway theatre after the curtain closed on Next to Normal, a show on the same block where the SUV was found.
"At the end of the show, the police came in. We were told we had to leave," Carlisle said. "They said there was a bomb scare."
The car was parked on 45th Street, and the block was closed between Seventh and Eighth avenues as a precaution, police said. Times Square lies about six traffic-choked kilometres north of the site where terrorists bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993, then laid waste to it on September 11, 2001.
FBI agents are on the scene with the New York Police Department, and the matter is being taken seriously, said Paul Bresson, head of the FBI's public affairs office at bureau headquarters in Washington.
The Homeland Security Department is aware of the situation, but the NYPD has it under control and is investigating, said a Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is in progress.
Katy Neubauer, 46, and Becca Saunders, 39, of Milwaukee, were shopping for souvenirs two blocks south of the SUV when they saw panicked crowds.
"It was a mass of people running away from the scene," Neubauer said.
Said Saunders: "There were too many people, too many cops. I've never seen anything like it."
In December, a van without license plates parked in Times Square led police to block off part of the area for about two hours. A police robot examined the vehicle, and clothes, racks and scarves were found inside.
In March 2008, a hooded bicyclist hurled an explosive device at a military recruiting centre in the heart of Times Square, producing a flash, smoke and full-scale emergency response. No suspect was ever identified.
In December, police evacuated thousands of holiday tourists from Times Square after finding a white van that had been parked there for days without license plates and blacked-out windows. No bombs were found, and police later said they overlooked the van because it contained a parking placard for a nonprofit police group.
AP / 3 News