President Joe Biden has been briefed and is ‘closely monitoring’ the suspected terrorist attack on Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls on Wednesday.
‘The White House is closely monitoring the situation, law enforcement is on-scene and investigating,’ a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told DailyMail.com.
And White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote on social media: ‘The President has been briefed on the vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge Port of Entry. He and his team are closely following developments.’
Biden is on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, with his family for the Thanksgiving holiday.
A vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on the American side of a US-Canada bridge, prompting the closing of four border crossings in the area. Two occupants inside the vehicle were killed.
President Joe Biden arrived in Nantucket on Tuesday evening
The explosion left the vehicle in pieces next to the toll checkpoint in
The FBI Terrorism Task Force is investigating but officials are yet to confirm the motive.
‘This is obviously a very serious situation in Niagara Falls,’ Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said in Parliament, as he excused himself from Question Period in the House of Commons to be briefed further.
‘We are taking this extraordinary seriously,’ he added.
The bridge connects U.S. and Canada.
Three other bridges between western New York and Ontario – the Peace Bridge, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the Whirlpool Bridge – were quickly closed as a precaution.
The Buffalo-Niagara International Airport began security checks on all cars and told passengers to expect additional screenings. The FAA later closed the airport.
After the explosion, motorists who’d driven into America were told to leave their vehicles and walk back into Canada while the cars were checked for bombs.
Speaking to WGRZ-TV, Mike Guenther said he saw a vehicle speeding toward the crossing from the US side of the border when it swerved to avoid another car, crashed into a fence and exploded.
‘All of a sudden he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high,’ Guenther told the station.
‘I never saw anything like it.’
The explosion on Wednesday was reported shortly after 11.22am. It is one of if not the busiest crossings between Canada and the US
Video taken from a building next to the checkpoint shows the enormous blast
The aftermath of the explosion at Rainbow Bridge border crossing at Niagara Falls on Wednesday after a suspected terror attack
A tourist visiting Canada who at the scene told DailyMail.com she could see plumes of smoke rise into the air and were told they wouldn’t be able to cross.
Photos she took shortly after the event saw white smoke rising from the scene.
She was attempting to cross over into the US for a walk from Canada when they were turned around.
She said: ‘It must have just happened as we’d come up to it. Moments before the guard had said as long as we have passports, it’s fine.
‘Then we were told not go over and to try again in a couple of hours.’