German police ruled out Thursday a terrorist attack as they battled to find clues as to who planted a nail bomb at a busy Cologne shopping area that wounded 22 people.
At a press conference in this western German city, a police spokesman told reporters that the authorities had "not the slightest piece of evidence that it was of a terrorist or xenophobic nature."
The blast, the first of its kind in Germany for years, sent glass and nails flying around a 50-metre (yard) radius on Wednesday afternoon in a street known as "Little Istanbul," home to many of Cologne's Turks.
"So far, we have no clear indication about the objective of this attack," the spokesman, Dieter Klinger, said, adding that "the means used and the way it was carried out" clearly showed it was meant to kill people.
Klinger said that several witnesses had been questioned but that no substantial leads had surfaced. He said that North Rhine-Westphalia state police were involved with Cologne authorities in the investigation.
Earlier remarks by police officers and press reports suggested the bombing could have been an underworld attack or a revenge strike after a dispute between rival Turkish groups.
The bomb went off in or in front of a three-storey building, with a hairdresser's shop on the ground floor bearing the brunt of the explosion. Among the 22 wounded, some of them badly, was a pregnant woman.
Glass was scattered widely around the building, which housed apartments on the upper floors.
The rest of the structure was not badly damaged, but the facade of others in the area showed traces of the explosion. Sixteen had broken windows.
Another police spokesman said that the bomb was filled with nails about 10 centimetres (four inches) long, some of which were found about 50 metres away.
Investigators were examining whether the device had been planted on a bicycle that appeared to have been close to the centre of the blast site.
"It was horrible. Blood and broken glass was everywhere," one witness, Mehmet Harminci, told Der Spiegel magazine at the scene on Wednesday. "I can't believe it. People come to Keupstrasse to eat and do their shopping - from now on we should all be afraid. Nothing will be like it was anymore."
Harminci, 24, was in a nearby Turkish kebab snack bar when the blast happened. "All of a sudden, the glass in the window exploded," he said.
Another witness, Kucuk Ziya, said he saw "people rolling around on the pavement. One had an open wound 10 centimetres long," he said.
A man who had been critically wounded in the blast had stabilised by early Thursday, police said.
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