THESE were the extraordinary moments the city of Boston erupted in joy and relief as cops ended the biggest manhunt in US history with a violent gun battle.

Nineteen-year-old Chechen student Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding out in a boat in the backyard of a house in the city's Watertown suburb after a tip-off from a homeowner. Hundreds of cops, soldiers and agents supported by Black Hawk helicopters, armoured vehicles and a robot cornered the teenager who, with his older brother, is believed to have killed three people and maimed 176 in the worst terror attack in America since 9/11. Cheering The ar.rest ended five days of terror sparked by the double bombing at the finishing line of the Boston Marathon. The city's mayor, Thomas Menino, took to the police radio to exclaim: "We got him! I have never loved this city and its people more than i do today. Nothing can defeat the heart of this city. nothing."

Relieved law enforcement officers began cheering, clapping and high-living citizens after Tsarnaev, was arrested. Last night he was being heavily guarded and was in a serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center after losing a lot of blood. He surrendered after being hit twice by a fierce volley of fire unleashed by a cordon of officers who surrounded his bolthole. The Boston police department confirmed the end of the hunt on its official Twitter account by declaring: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won.

" Thousands of jubilant members of the public emerged from a citywide lockdown and took to the streets of Watertown to salute FBI, SWAT, ATF and police officers as they left the scene of Tsarnaev's final showdown. The bloody endgame came four days after the bombing and just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two men suspected of plant-ing the explosives that ripped through the crowd at the marathon finish line. Two blasts killed three people, including eight-year-old Martin Richard who tragically stood just feet from where Dzholchar Tsarnaev placed a rucksack with a deadly home-made pressure-cooker bomb. The captured bomber's older brother, Tamerlan (26), was shot dead on Friday after a 24-hour drama Boston police commissioner Ed Davis was celebratory in his tone as he took to Twitter to say: "It's a proud day to be a Boston police officer. Thank you all.

" Police cornered the younger bomber around 7pm local time, midnight in Ireland, and less than an hour after issuing an unprecedented order for citizens to lock themselves in their homes. Reports that the terrorist suspect had turned himself into a ticking human timebomb sparked fear throughout the city. The dramatic breakthrough came after a elderly boat owner went to his backyard and noticed blood on his boat. About 5.45pm, David Henneberry stepped outside his house on Franklin Street hi Watertown, less than three quarters of a mile from the center of the police search in the town. Neighbour George Pizzuto told ABC News that Mr Henneberry thought the canvas tarpaulin that covered his 25ft boat appeared to be askew. Blood "He looked and noticed something was off about his boat, so he put his ladder up on the side of the boat and climbed up, and then he saw blood on it," said Mr Pizzuto, Mr Henneberry fled to the home of neighbour Pizzuto with his ill wife, while hundreds of law enforcement officials converged on his backyard.

Two Black Hawk helicopters circled the area while SWAT teams moved through in formation, taking up shooting positions on garden sheds and suburban walls. Authorities used a bullhorn to call on the suspect to surrender but he refused to give himself up. "We used a robot to pull the tarp off the boat," said David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police. "We were also watching him with a thermal imaging camera in our helicopter. He was weakened by blood loss — injured last night most likely." As nearby homeowners filmed the showdown on camera phones, a deafening burst of fire hit the boat along with flash-bang grenades and gas. The teenage terrorist surrendered moments later. The capture sent waves of relief through Boston and the suburb of Watertown where jubilant crowds took to the streets to thank police, FBI and law enforcement officials.

Teenagers waved American flags, people cheered and motorists honked car horns across the city. Hundreds of people marched down Commonwealth Avenue, a wide thoroughfare near the scene of the bombings, chanting "USA" and singing Sweet Caroline, the anthem of the local baseball team, the Boston Red Sox. New York Mets fans cheered when it was announced during a game against the Washington Nationals that the suspect had been apprehended.

In Boston's Irish-American neighbourhood of Dorchester, where eight-year-old bombing victim Martin Richard lived, residents set off fireworks to celebrate."We've closed an important chapter in this tragedy," said US president Barack Obama in a televised address. But he acknowledged that many unanswered questions remain about the motivations of the two men accused of perpetrating the attacks that unnerved the nation, and whether they had a support network of other Islamic extremists. "The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers," said Mr Obama, who branded the suspects "terrorists". The Irish-American family of little Martin – whose six year-old sister also lost a leg in the bombing – issued a statement: "Tonight, our community is once again safe from these two men." Cornered Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed on Thursday night in a shootout with police less than a mile from where his brother was cornered. One witness of the firefight in which Tamerlan was killed said the younger brother made his getaway in an SUIT and that he ran over Tamerlan's body as he fled.

The men were identified within hours of Monday's bombing outrage in which 100 Irish citizens and marathon runners were caught up. After combing through a mass of pictures and video from the bomb site in the minutes before the bombing, the FBI had publicised images of the two men on Thursday and asked the public for help to find them. The manhunt and a full-scale lock-down cost the city an estimated $500 million. In separate interviews, the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers said they
believed their sons were incapable of carrying out the bombings. "He [Tamerlan] was controlled by the FBI, like, for three to five years," his mother Zubeidat said, speaking in English and using the direct English translation of a word in Russian that means monitored. "They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the internet he was going to," she said from Makhachkala, the city where she lives in Russia's Dagestan region. The brothers were described as "all American kids" by friends. They had moved to the US as refugees from the war-torn Chech_nya region hi 2002.