By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police in Washington are offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information that could lead to the arrest of those involved in three explosions within a 15-minute span at retail outlets on Sunday.
No one was killed or injured in the early hour blasts in the Northeast neighborhood of the U.S. capital but all three places were damaged, police said in a statement. In one of the blasts, someone threw “a Molotov cocktail style object” at a Safeway store before fleeing in a vehicle, police said.
The other two explosions took place outside an ATM and in front of a Nike store. All of the establishments were closed at the time.
It was not immediately clear how many suspects police were looking for but officials released an image of one suspect and of a vehicle that could have been used in the attack.
As with other big U.S. cities, Washington has experienced a spike in crimes in recent years. In an editorial column last year, the Washington Post said that the regularity of violence and crime in Washington was “alarming” and posed a “serious problem.”
Sunday’s explosions appeared to be targeted at commercial establishments and not any members of the public, police said.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Grant McCool)
