An explosion in a house in western Germany has left more than a dozen firefighters and police officers injured, some of them serious, while the indications suggest that the event could be intentional and a suspect has been arrested.

As announced by the Minister of the Interior of the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Herbert Reul, the explosion in the town of Ratingen injured ten firefighters and two police officers who had gone to a house, where a lifeless body was also found.

The media reported that, after the explosion, the area was deployed a great device in which special police forces participated, including snipers, and that shortly after an individual was arrested inside the apartment block. Reul refused to speculate on the motivation for the event but indicated that according to data from social networks, the suspect, who is also injured, is close in ideology “to the deniers of the coronavirus.”

The sequence in which events unfolded still could not be fully clarified, but it seems that the security forces went to the house alerted by the owner, since the letters had been accumulating in the mailbox for a long time. Given signs that someone inside the house might need help, the agents called the fire brigade to force the door of the home, inhabited by a mother and her son.

The latter, against whom there were arrest warrants for minor offences, could suspect that he was going to be arrested and reacted, according to the preliminary version handled by the authorities, exploding a still unknown device. With respect to the lifeless body found in the house, according to the media it is the mother of the detainee, although for the moment the cause of death is unknown and if it occurred prior to the incident.