MAJOR BOMBING (?) AT A MALL IN HELSINKI. There was also a car bombing there last summer. What gives? The news coverage offers no suggestion of a motive, or even of the nature of the perpetrators — the story about today’s explosion even suggests it was an accident, though other information casts doubt on that. Very curious.
UPDATE: Several Finnish readers (I’ve got Finnish readers? Yep.) emailed in response to the above. The earlier car bombing was inept, (which hardly rules out the terrorist crowd) and appears to have been about drugs. The most recent explosion is still unexplained, and is looking somewhat less likely to be an accident. Finnish blogger Teemu Lehtonen is keeping an eye on things.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jaako Haapasolo emails from Finland:
An interior ministry press conference was given at 9:15 local time, that’s about 45 minutes ago. They (including the interior minister and the national police chief) confirmed that they now suspect a crime in the mall bombing. They reported that traces of an explosive were found at the scene. At least 7 people died, at least one of them a child. The number of wounded is reported varyingly from 50 to over 80, ten of whom are wounded seriously.
No one at the press conference (including the reporters) uttered the word ‘terrorism’, I would guess by some sort of consensus decision, to avoid panic or whatever… that may change of course. I’m sure it is one of the most pressing questions on everyone’s mind here.
The shopping mall, one of the largest in the region, is located in Vantaa, a suburb of Helsinki, some 12 km north of Helsinki city centre. The blast happened at Friday night when there were around 1000-2000 people shopping there.
It is a sickening feeling. As a regular reader of Ha’aretz, I am all too familiar with the ‘drill’: Friday night, a report of an explosion, initial confusion, then the steadily rising numbers of dead and wounded…
The car bombing last summer was definitely established as criminal on criminal, a debt collection gone bad if I remember correctly. This time I fear it could be very, very different.
This is all that I know so far. I can’t find any good links in English beyond what Reuters has.
I can’t confirm this report at the moment, but there seems no reason to doubt it. Vantaa, I believe, is near an area where immigrants tend to cluster.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like it was definitely a bombing. Oh, and I just noticed that Teemu says so too.