A dozen officers injured in blast

NAfter the explosion in an apartment in a high-rise building in Ratingen with several injured emergency services, the police caught the owner of the apartment. Special forces stormed the apartment and arrested the approximately 60-year-old man, said a police spokeswoman on site on Thursday.

The man was taken to a hospital with “severe injuries”. The police also found a body in his apartment, as North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) reported on Thursday in the interior committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament.

The man is injured. Whether he was injured by the explosion or during the arrest cannot be said at this time, the police spokeswoman said.

According to preliminary findings, ten firefighters and two police officers were injured in the explosion, some of them very seriously, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) reported on Thursday in the interior committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament. A police spokeswoman on site spoke of eight critically injured emergency services and two other injured people.

The situation had been unclear for hours before the arrest, special forces and snipers were on site. Banging noises could be heard again and again, as a dpa reporter reported on Thursday afternoon. The scene was cordoned off over a wide area.

Reporter reports of popping noises

According to the police, there was an explosion in an apartment in the high-rise building around 11:15 a.m. on Thursday. Reul reported that around 10 a.m. the homeowners’ association had informed the police that a resident’s mailbox was overflowing. The police then called the fire brigade on site to open the door. A mother lives in the apartment with her son. There was fire in the room. The son triggered a detonation with an object that has not yet been identified.

A dpa reporter reported that there were numerous popping noises during operations several hours after the explosion. The police initially gave no information. Smoke came from an apartment on the top floor of the skyscraper, as the dpa reporter reported. Police special forces could be seen on the roof above the affected apartment, on the balconies next to it and on the balconies in the neighboring house.

It is not known whether the man is still in the apartment, Reul reported to the committee. The woman was briefly seen on the balcony.