Police authorities in Norway have said an overnight explosion at the US embassy in Oslo may have been an act of terrorism.
The US embassy in the Norwegian capital recorded little damages after the explosion in the early hours of Sunday, but no-one got injured.
“One of the hypotheses is that it is an act of terrorism, but we are not completely locked into it,” Frode Larsen, the head of police joint investigation and intelligence unit, told Norway’s public broadcaster NRK.
Norwegian authorities say they are in contact with US diplomats, and an inquiry into the blast has now commended. US diplomats have not spoken about the incident.
Speaking to NRK on Sunday, Larsen stressed that “we have to be open to the possibility that there may be other causes behind what has happened”.
In an earlier statement, Norway’s police said that “large resources” were sent to the area around the US embassy at about 01:00 local time on Sunday (00:00 GMT).
“The police are in dialogue with the embassy and no injuries have been reported,” the statement added.
Michael Dellemyr, who is spearheading the response of the police told NRK that the explosion was at the public entrance to the building.
He stated that police officers had conducted searches in the area around the embassy in the Morgedalsvegen district of Oslo, about 7km (4 miles) outside the city centre.
He noted that the police had also sent out an appeal for information from anyone who may have seen or heard anything about the incident.
Photographs posted on social media showed shattered glass in the snow outside the entrance to the consular section of the building, cracks in a glass door as well as dark marks on a tiled floor.
Norwegian authorities said the incident was “unacceptable”, with Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide pointing out that “the security of diplomatic missions is very important to us”.
