Raids target possible links to Shahzad on LI

Residents got a startling wake-up call Thursday morning when police vehicles and helicopters descended on two quiet Long Island neighborhoods in a search for ties to accused Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.

Authorities searched two residences linked to Muhammad Younis, 43, who his current landlord said is of Pakistani descent and works as a supplier to home-improvement stores.

Neither of the searches, in Centereach and Shirley, led to an arrest.

Ashim Chakraborty, Younis' landlord in Centereach, answered a knock at his front door at about 7:30 a.m. and found an FBI agent on his stoop.

"He said we have to investigate, and I don't ask" questions, Chakraborty said.

The block was filled with police vehicles - at least 10, he said - and a dozen officers and investigators who examined the storage shed in the backyard and the basement apartment where Younis lives with Kristine Malfi.

A woman in the apartment Thursday afternoon called out to reporters, "Drop dead, I'm an American."

Meanwhile, several reporters flocked to a mosque in Shirley, acting on a tip that it had been raided. Abdul-Lateef Poulos, imam at the mosque, Masjid Umar Bin Khattaab, arrived to find a herd of media asking him about possible ties of anyone associated with the mosque to terrorist groups.

Poulos confronted reporters to say he finds it "unfair and inappropriate" to link his mosque to terror activities because of an FBI presence in the neighborhood earlier in the day.

Poulos added that terrorist actions "always have a negative effect on the majority of us who are just living our lives, going to mosque."

It later emerged that the search had taken place elsewhere in Shirley, at an address on Free State Drive that documents show as one of Younis' previous residences.

From his home nearby, neighbor Walter Kulsa, 67, a retired security guard, said he had noticed unmarked sport utility vehicles with tinted windows parked near the house of Mohammad Iqbal - a friend of Younis - for at least a week. On Sunday, Kulsa said, he talked to a man in an SUV parked there who showed Kulsa a federal agent's badge.

Kulsa described Iqbal as a quiet neighbor.

"It's spooky, unbelievable" to think of Iqbal being considered in connection with a terror incident, he said.

In Centereach, a woman who lives next door to Younis' home and did not want to give her name said she woke up to the sound of helicopters and thought at first a drug raid was under way in the neighborhood.

With Patrick Whittle

and Keith Herbert