A man who says he pledged allegiance to the ISIL Takfiris has attacked a police officer in New York.

On Wednesday, the 21-year-old, identified as Fareed Mumuni, was detained at his home on Staten Island where he lunged at an FBI special agent with a kitchen knife searching his house.

Mumuni told police that he "had pledged allegiance" to the terrorists fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

The search was being conducted as part of an investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of local and federal agents.

According to their findings, Mumuni was “a fervent supporter of the foreign terrorist organization”.

Mumuni allegedly said he was planning to join the militants in the territories under their control and had discussed building a pressure cooker bomb with Munther Omar Saleh, a 20-year-old student at an aeronautics college in Queens, the easternmost borough of New York City.

Prosecutors were to demand custody without bail for Mumuni, who was supposed to appear before a federal court in Brooklyn later in the day.

They said Mumuni and Saleh, detained last Saturday over a similar attack, had discussed methods to attack police using guns and a bomb.

Saleh, who had also pledged allegiance to ISIL, translated ISIL propaganda into English while he also has a history of online activities, indicating he favored the Takfiri ideology.

Earlier in June, another ISIL affiliate, identified as 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, was gunned down by police in a Boston suburb as he tried to attack the law enforcement officers with a military-style knife.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of country as well as areas in Iraq and Libya.

NT/NT