A hand grenade exploded in a discotheque in Austria’s
second-largest city early on Saturday, wounding up to 20 teenage revellers, four seriously, police said.
The grenade exploded at about 3:20am (0120 GMT) at the
X-Large Disco in the western city of Linz, about 200 kilometres west of Vienna, said police representative Michael Tischlinger. Bits of grenade were found not far from the disc jockey’s booth, he said.
The wounded, most of them aged 15 to 19, were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment of shrapnel wounds, Austrian radio said. It quoted officials with Linz’s criminal police division as calling the blast ”an attack” but police said they had no motive and were careful to avoid any mention of terrorism.
”There was a flash in the DJ area on the dance floor, followed by a terrible explosion,” Tischlinger told The Associated Press, citing witness accounts.
The force of the blast sent spotlights crashing to the floor, Tischlinger said. About 40 people were inside the disco at the time.
A doctor treating the wounded told Austrian radio that metal pellets and shards were embedded in the skin of the victims and in some cases had penetrated their internal organs. The doctor said some of the victims would have to undergo surgery, but that none appeared to have suffered life-threatening wounds.
Authorities said the disco is adjoined by a small restaurant frequented by young Serbian and Croatian immigrants. The disco is in a western part of the city known locally as ”Little Munich”.
The Interior Ministry was sending a team of explosives experts to the scene to examine the remains of the grenade.
Hand grenades are commonplace in Western Europe and are relatively easy to obtain by gangs and young toughs who sometimes use them as weapons. Authorities say many of the grenades originate in the Balkans, left over from the wars that followed the bloody 1990s break-up of the former Yugoslavia. – Sapa-AP