One man died when an explosive device went off in 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.
Authorities aren’t ruling out any motive for the blast. Members of a homicide unit — but not counter-terrorism investigators — were at the scene midday Tuesday.
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.
As reported by CNN