MONACO, June 29 (Reuters) – Police in Monaco and neighbouring France were searching on Tuesday for a man suspected of detonating a makeshift bomb in Monaco that wounded several people, a local official said, while French and Ukrainian media reported that a Ukrainian-born oligarch was the intended target.
Two of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries from Monday evening’s attack, Christophe Mirmand, minister of state of Monaco, told BFM TV.
BFM TV and Le Figaro newspaper said the target of the attack was Vadym Yermolaiev, who was a major real estate developer in Dnipro. He left Ukraine several years ago, renounced his Ukrainian citizenship and became a citizen of Cyprus. He was placed under Ukrainian sanctions in December 2023.
French emergency services deployed to the scene to provide back up and a joint police operation was underway to track down the fugitive, France’s interior ministry said.
“No event of this nature has ever happened in the Principality before,” Mirmand told the French news channel.
The blast occurred shortly before 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday in the centre of Monaco, a tax-free microstate on the French Riviera known as a haven for billionaires and their luxury yachts.
French newspaper Le Figaro said video surveillance images showed a man dropping a backpack at the entrance of a residential building shortly before the explosion.
BFM TV described the explosive device as a “parcel bomb”, citing the principality’s prosecutor general, while Prince Albert of Monaco described the attack as “an odious act.”
(Reporting by Manon Cruz and Layli Foroudi; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Sudip Kar-Gupta and Louise Heavens)
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