Explosion near German train station injures several people and draws police response

An explosion near a German train station followed by the discovery of a suspicious object caused police to temporarily close the transport hub in the southern city of Augsburg

BERLIN -- An explosion near a German train station followed by the discovery of a suspicious object caused police to temporarily close the transport hub in the southern city of Augsburg on Wednesday morning.

Later in the morning, police said the suspicious object had been identified as harmless and that the train station was reopened again at 10 a.m. and trains starting running again.

“We can give the all-clear — the object we found in front of the main train station was harmless, and we have reopened the station,” police spokesperson Timo Küfner told The Associated Press. “The train are running again, too.”

An unidentified object exploded in a passageway near the station at around 3:15 a.m., according to officials, causing minor injuries to two people. The people injured were a 17-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man, both of whom are Ukrainian citizens, the German news agency dpa reported.

Later, another second suspicious object that did not explode was discovered right at the main train station, Küfner said, leading to the shutdown of the train station at 8:30 in the morning.

Explosives experts from the Bavarian state criminal police office were investigating at the scene.

“It’s still too early to say anything about a possible motive for the overnight explosion, but we are investigating,” said Küfner.

Road traffic and public transportation in the vicinity of the station were disrupted in the early morning hours but later traffic was running normally again, police said.

Augsburg is a city of 308,000 residents in Bavaria, about 78 kilometers (48 miles) northwest of Munich.

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