One man died when an explosive device destroyed a car Tuesday morning in Berlin, police said.
The blast occurred around 8 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) in Charlottenburg, a district in western Berlin, according to city police spokesman Stefan Petersen.
The man who was killed was driving the Volkswagen Passat when it exploded, said Carsten Mueller, another police spokesman. Berlin police said it wasn’t clear if the 43-year-old victim — who has a criminal history — was the intended target of the blast.
Members of a Berlin police homicide unit — but not counter-terrorism investigators — converged on the scene midday Tuesday. They are still trying to figure out if the explosive device was inside or outside the Passat when it detonated.
Authorities have said that no information indicates this was a terrorist act.
About five years ago, a string of arson attacks in the German capital were first concentrated in Charlottenburg before spreading to other parts of the city, police spokesman Guido Busch said at the time.
Authorities characterized those crimes — with at least 50 cars torched in one week in August 2011 — as “politically motivated.” Dieter Wiefelsputz, an expert with Germany’s Social Democratic Party, characterized those incidents as “vandalism (that does not) cross the line to terrorism.”
Debris litters street in residential area
Tuesday’s explosion occurred along the main thoroughfare of Bismarckstrasse in the large, residential western Berlin neighborhood.
Afterward, debris littered the street around the four-door car, according to a picture tweeted by Berlin police.
The vehicle’s front end looked badly damaged and its windows — including the front windshield — were blown out.
Authorities at one point urged people nearby go indoors, close their windows and not to linger on balconies as a Berlin police bomb squad approached the Passat.
But, a short time later, police gave an all-clear after determining no more explosives were in the car.