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© Associated Press Firefighters work the scene where a fire engulfed several apartment units in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood in freezing Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Blast Hit Three-Story Building; Cause Is Unknown

A morning explosion rocked a three-story building east of downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday, injuring 13 people, six of them critically.
More than a dozen fire engines, ladder trucks and rescue vehicles were on the scene Wednesday to manage the three-alarm fire, according to Greg Nelson, senior supervisor for emergency communications for the city of Minneapolis. He added that authorities had done a primary search and didn't locate anyone in the building. The building houses a business on the first floor and two floors of apartment units.

John Elder, the police department's public information officer, said the first-floor business is a grocery. A nearby mosque is "in fine shape," he said.

The cause of the explosion is unknown.


"We believe it may have started in an apartment on the second floor," said Mr. Nelson, who also cautioned that any cause or origin wouldn't be known until after a formal investigation. "We are still doing a defensive attack on the exterior of the building, putting fires out as we can."

Mr. Nelson said that a nearby police officer reported a single explosion with debris falling out of the building. "We did have reports of people jumping out, but we are not able to verify that that did actually happen," he said.

Nearby buildings weren't damaged, he said.

"This doesn't happen very often," he said. "It's an uncommon occurrence."

Zuhur Ahmed, a board member of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the group was monitoring the situation closely.

"So far we don't have any details," she said. "But whenever there's an explosion, fire or anything of that sort by a mosque, there's a little bit of concern if the motive is a hate crime. We're just concerned and watching out for that."

Ms. Ahmed added that the grocery store and mosque are both owned by Somalis, and the residents in the upstairs apartments are also Somalis. "We are still trying to figure it out, but no one really knows," she said.