NEW YORK (AFP) - The suspect held on suspicion of carrying out weekend bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey is in critical but stable condition in a hospital, police said Tuesday (Sept 20).

Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was wounded in a shoot-out Monday with police in Linden, New Jersey, just four hours after the FBI released his mugshot and sent text message alerts to millions of people.

"Critical but stable," New York police commissioner James O'Neill told CBS News when asked if the suspect would likely survive.

Rahami was shot multiple times and underwent surgery on Monday, the local prosecutor said. He has been charged on five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and two unlawful weapons counts.

Police are still investigating the motives behind Saturday's bombings in the New York neighborhood of Chelsea, which injured 29 people, and a pipe blast at a US Marine Corps race on the Jersey shore.

Officials say that Rahami travelled "extensively" to Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years, but have not yet found evidence linking him to militant groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Taleban.