At an extraordinary press conference on Sunday Hungary’s Police Chief sent a message to the perpetrator, for whom a manhunt was launched across Hungary in the weekend. “The patrolling police officers were the targets of Saturday night’s bomb explosion on Teréz körút in Budapest downtown, they wanted to assassinate my police officers”, declared Károly Papp, who called the explosion an attack against the whole Hungarian police force. But who might be the mysterious suspect and why would he attack the police officers?
This is what we have known so far:
- Two police officers, a 23-year-old woman, and a 26-year-old man, were injured when walking past a ground-level shop near the Grand Boulevard, doing their regular rounds, at 10.36 pm on Saturday night. The male member of the patrol team asked for assistance following the explosion.
- A homemade shrapnel bomb was used in the explosion. Hundreds of nails were found in the area of explosion. The bomb was probably activated by a remote controller.
- The two police officers were hospitalized with life-threatening and serious injuries, and have since been stabilized, but are still in intensive care.
- Police began investigating the crime scene on Saturday night right after the detonation and seized 145 CCTV recordings. The area around the blast was closed to the public during the weekend until the head of the crime scene investigation team completed the examination of the area is complete.
- Authorities are looking for a suspect in his early twenties, he was wearing a light-coloured fishing cap, a dark canvas jacket, blue jeans and white trainers. Hundreds of police are in a manhunt right now across Hungary and are cooperating on the case with Hungary’s Counter-Terrorism Centre and Secret Services. Police have said so far nothing about the possible whereabouts of the perpetrator.
- Dozens of eye-witnesses have spoken to the police and media since the explosion. It is very difficult the make a complete story based on the different versions. A taxi driver reportedly suffered light injuries in the explosion too.
via origo.hu and MTI; cover photo: index.hu, photos: MTI
