A Spanish police officer was killed, and a bomb disposal colleague lost a leg on Tuesday when a backpack device detonated as officers carried it away from a building entrance in Oviedo.
Officers were responding to a violent dispute between two families in the northern city. A man shot a young woman in the early hours, a council spokesperson said, and she is no longer in danger.
On arrival at the scene on the city’s outskirts, police found a backpack at the building’s entrance containing an explosive device, according to police union JUPOL. It went off as officers removed it to defuse it.
Local reports place the incident on Rafael R. Urrusti Street in Oviedo’s Villafría area.
According to JUPOL, the officer who was killed was part of the National Police canine unit, while his colleague, who is in critical state with an amputated leg, belongs to the bomb disposal unit.
In X, Spanish police honoured the fallen officer and expressed their solidarity with the dead policeman’s family and friends. The opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo described the occurrences as heartbreaking. The mayor of Oviedo, Alfredo Canteli visited the site to get more information.
The investigating and forensic teams continued with the process of analysing the street while the motives for shooting the officers and the explosives are still being actively investigated. As of now, reports have not confirmed any arrest of the person responsible for leaving the backpack at the entrance.
The police were allowed to handle the bag after it was discovered in the scene where an individual had been shot already.
