Washington DC, Mar 20 (EFE).- Police in Austin, Texas, reported that the blast that occurred on Tuesday was caused by an incendiary device and may not be related to the series of bomb explosions that have taken place in recent days in the city.
“There was no package explosion in the 9800 block of Brodie Ln. Items inside package was not a bomb, rather an incendiary device. At this time, we have no reason to believe this incident is related to previous package bombs,” the Austin Police Department wrote on Twitter.
The explosion occurred Tuesday afternoon near a department store of a non-profit organization located in the south of the city.
A 30-year-old man was seriously injured in the blast, although his life is not in danger.
Austin, the capital of Texas, is terrified by a series of parcel bombs that have exploded in recent days in the city for no apparent reason or specific purpose.
Since Mar. 2, five packages have exploded, killing two people and injuring half a dozen.
Police: Latest Texas bomb shipped from FedEx store
Austin, Texas, Mar 20 (EFE).- At least one person was injured Tuesday in a bomb blast at the FedEx facilities near San Antonio, Texas, authorities told local media.
The explosion of what was apparently a package bomb occurred at 12:30 am at the company’s installation in the town of Schertz, according to the sources.
Later in the day, police in the state capital said that the package bomb that detonated at the FedEx warehouse was sent from one of the shipping firm’s stores in Austin.
The FedEx store in question in located in the Sunset Valley, a municipality that is completely surrounded by Austin, a little more than three kilometers (about 2 miles) from the site where on Sunday night another bomb exploded.
A few minutes after midnight on Tuesday, a package with the “same” characteristics as the earlier bombs that have detonated in the past month in Austin exploded inside the FedEx installation near San Antonio.
FBI spokesperson Michelle Lee said that law enforcement officials were considering the possibility that the latest bomb is linked with the earlier bombings.
The San Antonio Police Department said in a statement that police chief William McManus misspoke when he said at a news conference on Tuesday that a second package bomb that had not detonated had been found at the FedEx facility, specifying that only one package – the one that blew up – had been found, despite an extensive search of the installation by law enforcement.
Austin police spokesperson Destiny Winston, meanwhile, confirmed on Tuesday morning that another “suspicious package” had been found in southwest Austin in another FedEx warehouse near the city’s airport, but she provided no further details and said that she could not confirm that it is related to the San Antonio incident.
Austin police said that they have a videotape showing the explosion that, the sources said, looked similar to the other four blasts that have occurred in the Texas capital in recent weeks.
The injured person was treated at the scene and released. At the time of the explosion there were about 75 employees working at the FedEx installation.
This is the fifth such incident to occur in central Texas so far this month, the latest last Sunday injuring two young men walking along a sidewalk in southwest Austin.
In the other four incidents, two people were killed and four were injured. Given the fact that three of those people were African American and one was Hispanic, authorities suspect that there may be a racial element to the attacks. Authorities admit that at present they have no suspects.