An explosion ripped through a residential building in Monaco on Monday evening, injuring at least three people and setting off a search for a man seen on video surveillance fleeing on foot toward Beausoleil. The blast happened shortly before 21:00 on rue Révérend Père Louis Frolla, near the French border.
The Monaco government said two of the injured were seriously hurt. Thibault Stéphane said two people were in absolute emergency and another was not in life-threatening condition, while the 13-year-old adolescent was reported in relative emergency after the blast. The injured were said to be members of the same Ukrainian family, including two parents aged 50 to 60.
The scale of the response showed how quickly the incident moved beyond one building. Bomb disposal experts and judicial police officers were sent to the scene, and gendarmerie checks were put in place at the Turbie toll near the Monegasque border. That made the explosion a security matter as much as a rescue operation, with Monaco and France both pulled into the immediate fallout.
Christophe Mirmand called the blast vraisemblablement d’un attentat and said the explosive device likely contained bolts and shot, but the question that matters most remains unsettled: it is not known whether the people entering the building were the intended targets. A person was seen placing a backpack in front of the entrance door before the explosion, then leaving on foot toward Beausoleil, yet neither identity nor motive has been confirmed.
Mirmand said it was the first time, to his knowledge, that such an act had occurred in the principality. That is why the case now turns on the next findings from police and judicial investigators: whether the backpack was placed to hit the family inside, to strike anyone entering the building, or for some other reason that has not yet been established.
