Police in Germany say the search is ongoing but that the identity of the suspect and circumstances behind the incident are unknown.

German police are searching for a man who abandoned a bag of explosives at a train station in Berlin and fled after being stopped by officers.

Police said they had attempted to stop the man for a routine ID check at the Neukölln station in the German capital on Wednesday afternoon. He ran away and explosives were found in the backpack he left behind, Berlin’s police force said in a post on X.

The explosive material was taken to a nearby park, where experts detonated it on Wednesday evening, according to the post.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They detonated it?

    I mean, I’m no expert but… Isn’t the goal to diffuse the bomb/make it useless?

    Maybe they wanted to have a little fun 💣

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      18 hours ago

      Man, I bet the bomb defusal experts are kicking themselves not having asked you for your expert opinion beforehand

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      And the safest way to make an unstable explosive stable and non-explosive is to… explode it! No point faffing about with something dangerous like this when you can just destroy it.

        • Lhianna@feddit.org
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          1 day ago

          It wasn’t a bomb. There was no detonator. It was explosive material that can explode when you look at it the wrong way. There is no way to defuse it.

          • foggy@lemmy.world
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            24 hours ago

            I agree that controlled detonations can be the safest route, especially for highly unstable materials where any disturbance could trigger them. I’d understood, though, (again, not an expert), that in many cases… especially if no immediate threat to people is present… technicians might start with robots to examine the material remotely or potentially neutralize it without detonation, if safe.

            And, from my non-expert opinion, some explosive materials are sensitive enough to warrant a controlled detonation right away, but it seems there are far, far more often initial remote investigations before they make that call, to avoid unnecessary detonations. It’s always fascinating to see how much science goes into evaluating safety protocols! Or doesn’t, in this case.

            • Maalus@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              If you are not an expert, why are you so stubbornly repeating your opinion over and over?

              They are the experts and they decided to handle them a specific way.

              • foggy@lemmy.world
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                21 hours ago

                Because I posted a fun reasonable nonsense and y’all keep downviting and responding.

                There are better ways to disagree with reasonable discourse.

                • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                  20 hours ago

                  Yeah, read the room. This is news about a foiled terrorist attack on a German train station. Not everything needs to be “fun”. Not everything needs to be nonsense. There are better ways to contribute, especially since you basically went “omg police handcuffed a suspect they wanna bdsm?” but for the bomb squad.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          23 hours ago

          That’s… what they use to relocate the device (if possible) and place the detonation charge. I have a passing familiarity with EOD robots.

    • vxx@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It’s safer to detonate an unknown device. You don’t know how stable it is or how to defuse it at all.

      Germany is pretty good at defusing WWII bombs that are found all year around, but even with them it’s sometimes safer to detonate them.

      This isn’t a movie where someone tries to defuse it against a timer.

    • Lhianna@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      According to German news it was TATP which is extremely unstable so they detonated it in a safe place nearby to minimize the risk for everyone.