© Daniel Karmann / AFP
German police have denied reports of an explosion near a migrant center in northern Bavaria. They said that smoke came from a suitcase filled with aerosols, but there was no blast and no one was injured. The incident took place in the small town of Zirndorf, which is to the west of Nuremberg. Police have confirmed that there were
no explosives in the suitcase and it only contained aerosol cans. "No explosion, no injuries," police said on an official Twitter account.
Police said in a statement that they are currently searching for the owners of the suitcase, who are believed to be a man of Mediterranean appearance, who is in his early 30s, and a woman in her mid-20s.
Nuremberg is located in the state of Bavaria, which has been rocked recently by a spate of terrorist attacks, two of which were carried out by migrants. On Sunday, a 27-year-old Syrian refugee who was facing deportation to Bulgaria blew himself up after being refused access to a music festival. The explosion injured 15 passersby, but did not cause any deaths.
A 17-year-old who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police last week after
wounding five people with an ax near Wurzburg. Meanwhile on Friday, an 18-year-old
German-Iranian gunman killed nine people in Munich after going on a shooting spree in an attack he had planned for a year.
The rest of Germany has also been affected by an increase in terrorist activity. On Sunday, a 21-year-old
Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. On Tuesday, a man killed a doctor at a university clinic in Berlin, however the police said the incident was not related to terrorism.
Comment: Tagger? Salesman? 20% off bargain bulk purchase? But what's with the suitcase and why did people think something smoking was an explosion? More likely it was a cheap, fear-mongering plant aimed to get the migrant center in a headline, or the property of some absent-minded wall muralist. But, at the end of the day, it was really no more than 'canned rumor.'