Explosion at Finnish Mall Kills Bombing Suspect and 6 Others

An explosion that ripped through a shopping mall in Finland, killing seven people, injuring 80 and jolting the serenity of a nation, apparently was detonated by a troubled chemistry student who had downloaded bomb-making instructions from the Internet, police and media reports said Saturday.

Finnish authorities described the suspect in the Friday night blast, who was among the dead, as a 19-year-old student at a technical school outside the capital, Helsinki. They said a search of the young man’s apartment revealed that he was psychologically disturbed and that he had searched the Internet for tips on constructing a homemade bomb.

The powerful 5-pound device--small enough for the suspect to conceal--was packed with gunshot pellets and metal shards. The blast sent glass and steel flying and terrified 2,000 shoppers in the Myyrmanni mall, 10 miles north of Helsinki in the town of Vantaa.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in Finland before,” said Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who called his government into an emergency session. “The information we have suggests that the explosives were constructed so as to cause the largest possible damage.”

In the hours immediately after the blast, government officials did not rule out the possibility of a planned terrorist attack. But as the investigation widened, it appeared less likely that a radical organization was behind the devastation. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, whose fatalities included one child.

The suspect, whose name was not released, had no criminal record, police said. He was not believed to have been a political or religious extremist, according to Finnish media reports.

The prime minister described the incident as “an act of terror in a sense” because the blast tore through a mall busy with weekend shoppers. Finnish Chief Police Supt. Tero Haapala said the bomb was built with “some sort of professional knowledge.” But he added: “At this moment we have no motive.”

The bomb exploded on the mall’s ground floor, near where a clown vendor had been selling balloons minutes earlier. Five people were killed instantly, and two others died in local hospitals. The blast damaged 3,000 square feet. It also caused part of a ceiling to collapse, and many of those injured were struck with glass and falling debris, media reports said.

Finnish TV showed images of scared and bloody shoppers, crying and fleeing the mall as ambulances, police and firefighters converged on it.

“We are quite depressed,” said Kimmo Oksanen, an editor at Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s major newspaper. “There is a lot of shrapnel in the bodies of the victims. This bomb was designed to devastate.”

Lipponen and Finnish President Tarja Halonen attended a memorial service along with members of a figure-skating club who lost a teammate. Much of the Nordic nation of 5.2 million was in shock. With one of the lowest crime rates in Europe, Finland seldom experiences such a blow to the national psyche. Most violent crime, including a car bombing in July, occurs among organized gangs.

But as the International Committee of the Red Cross made a plea for blood donations, and as news broke that many of the wounded had lost limbs, the bishop of Helsinki, Eero Huovinen, said the nation’s sense of security had been shattered.

“Distress grew when we heard this was a crime,” the prelate said, adding that his country “is no longer a haven of safety.”

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin sent a message of condolence, and the French Foreign Ministry labeled the bombing an “odious act.”

Reports immediately after the explosion suggested that the cause might have been faulty gas cylinders. But that notion was dispelled after a bomb squad and chemical-sniffing dogs scoured the scene through the night. By sunrise Saturday, it had become apparent that the explosion was deliberate.

“This is the largest civilian disaster to affect the Greater Helsinki area since the war,” Interior Minister Ville Itala said.