Ten firefighters and two police officers injured in high-rise apartment explosion in Germany

A large number of firefighters were seriously injured when a bomb was intentionally set off in a high-rise apartment building in Ratingen in West Germany last week. 

According to a May 11-article on BBC, officers had responded to reports of a person in distress in an apartment. Inside they found a fire in one of the rooms. Then, a man then used a device to set off an explosion, the regional interior minister said.

Unofficial sources claim that a man had used a flamethrower inside the apartment

Heavily armed police stormed the flat and arrested a man aged 57, police said.

Herbert Reul, North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister, told officials that a body had also been found in the apartment. The Bild newspaper reported that it was the arrested man's mother.

Mr Reul said 10 firefighters and two police officers were injured during the operation.

Police had been called to check on the apartment after a residents' organisation had expressed concern that a mailbox was overflowing form not being emptied for a long time.

Police then called firefighters to help gain entry to the apartment, Herbert Reul said.

He said it was "incomprehensible" that police officers and firefighters would go on a mission to help and "ended up risking their lives".

A police spokeswoman told reporters that some of those hurt were in a potentially life-threatening condition.