Islamabad:
Pakistani authorities have detained several people in connection with the bombing attempt in New York's Times Square, intelligence officials said on Tuesday.
News of the detentions came shortly after Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik condemned the attempted attack and pledged full "help and support" to the US in the investigation.
One of the detained men, identified as Tauseef, was a friend of Faisal Shahzad, the American citizen of Pakistani origin who is in custody in the United States over the failed attack, one official said.
Authorities in the US have brought terrorism and mass destruction charges against Shahzad in the failed car bombing, saying he has confessed to receiving explosives training in Pakistan.
Charges against Shahzad, a naturalised US citizen from Pakistan, were contained in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan.
Tauseef meanwhile was arrested in the southern city of Karachi, said the official, who like all Pakistani intelligence officials refused to be named in the media.
Another official said several people had been taken into custody in Karachi since the failed attack Saturday.
Some media reports described them as relatives of Shahzad.
Neither said when the detentions had taken place. They said no charges had been filed.
Shahzad was on board a Dubai-bound flight that was taxiing away from the gate at New York's Kennedy Airport late Monday when the plane was stopped and FBI agents and New York Police Department detectives took him into custody, law enforcement officials said.
US officials have said the 30-year-old had recently returned from a five-month stay in Pakistan, raising speculation he may have been in contact with al-Qaida or Taliban groups in the South Asian country.
Malik said initial information showed Shahzad and his family came from the Pabbi region of northwest Pakistan, but that Shahzad had a Karachi identity card.
He said they were investigating whether Shahzad was acting independently or if others from the region may have been involved.
Several Pakistani officials said US authorities had not made a formal request for the country to help in the probe.
Malik said that Shahzad and his family came from Pukhtoonkhwa Khyber in Pabbi.
But two security officials in the northwest region said Shahzad was from the village of Mohib Bandar in Pabbi, but moved to the North Nazimabad district of Karachi several years ago.
They said he was a graduate of an engineering college and the son of a senior Pakistani air force officer.
But a Shahzad family member in the region told a local journalist that the officials were mistaken and that the family had nothing to do with the suspect in the United States.
Faisal and Shahzad are very common names in Pakistan.
One local television report said Shahzad spent time on his recent trip to Pakistan in Karachi and in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Peshawar is a gateway for foreigners seeking to travel into the nearby tribal regions where militant groups have long had sanctuaries.