Two explosions damaged small businesses in Frankfurt early Thursday, extending a recent series of blasts in the city and the surrounding Rhine-Main region. Police said explosives were detonated shortly after 4 a.m. outside a café in the Nordend neighborhood and several minutes later outside a kiosk in the city center.
No injuries were reported. Images of the café showed its glass frontage shattered, with fragments scattered onto the street. A police spokeswoman told Germany’s DPA news agency that officers were at the scene and working on the investigation. Police had not released information about a possible motive or suspects.
The incidents followed several other explosions in Frankfurt and nearby Offenbach in recent days. DW reported that an apartment building in Frankfurt-Bockenheim was hit early Monday, while explosions on Sunday damaged a bar, a café and a newsstand in Frankfurt’s Sachsenhausen district and in Offenbach. Those incidents also caused no reported injuries.
A 15-year-old suspect was arrested after the Sachsenhausen explosion and is in pretrial detention. Local public broadcaster HR reported that police have attributed several blasts in the region to organized crime and what is known as “violence as a service,” involving the recruitment of teenagers and young adults to carry out attacks. Authorities have not said whether Thursday’s explosions are connected to those cases.
In a separate development, German diesel prices have climbed to an average record of €2.45 per liter, or about $2.81, according to figures from the motoring organization ADAC cited by DW. The figure equates to more than $10.60 per US gallon. Average gasoline prices also reached a record, at €2.314 per liter, DW reported.
DW linked the fuel-price increases to the start of the Iran war and noted that measures intended to provide relief expired in June. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said the government would respond to price gouging, but no new measures had been announced. Coalition partner the Social Democrats have called for a windfall tax on oil companies, a proposal Merz has rejected.