PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has vowed to find out what turned two young US residents, accused of the Boston bombings, to hate after the second suspect was captured alive earlier.

Obama said in a brief statement from the White House that the attacks had failed because Americans refused to be terrorised and heaped praise on police and law enforcement services while remembering the dead and injured.

“Our nation is in debt to the people of Boston and the people of Massachusetts,” he said describing Monday’s bombings at the finish line of the city’s marathon as “vicious”.

The President said the full resources of the federal government were being tasked to aid in the investigation into the incident.

It followed the arrest of a suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was taken into custody by law enforcement after a dramatic hour-long stand-off in the backyard of a home in Franklin Street, Watertown.

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Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in an earlier shootout, are suspected of being behind the bombings at the finish line of the Boston marathon last Monday which killed three and left 170 injured.

Obama said that his thoughts and prayers were with the Collier family after MIT police officer Sean Collier, 26, was gunned down in a shootout earlier in the day, allegedly involving the two suspected Boston bombers.

The President said it was now up to authorities to determine: ”Why did these young men, who grew up and studied here as part of our community and our country, resort to such violence?

“How did they plan and carry out these attacks and did they receive any help?”

He said the families of those who died and the wounded deserved answers to these questions and noted that the people of Boston “refused to be intimated” during the past few days.

Obama urged Americans not to rush to conclusions about the motives behind the attack nor to rush to conclusions about certain communities within the US as a result of the attacks.

He also said that the victims of the explosion at a fertiliser plant in the town of West in Texas had not been forgotten

“Our thoughts, prayers are with the people of West, Texas,” he said following the explosion which killed at least 12 people in the Texas town earlier this week.

“All in all, this has been a tough week, but we’ve seen the chracter of our country once more,” the President added.

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