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Police suspect bank explosion was robbery

Wuhan police say they still have not identified the cause of a bank explosion that killed two people and injured more than 10 on Thursday.

An officer from the criminal investigation bureau said the most experienced detectives and forensic experts in Hubei had met yesterday to piece together evidence, list suspects and examine possible motives.

'From what I have heard, most expert opinion leans towards a bank robbery, considering the timing and location,' she said.

But the experts could not rule out a slight possibility that the explosion at the China Construction Bank branch was a carefully planned terrorist attack under the cover of an attempted bank robbery.

She said the police could not release much information because it could be used by perpetrators who remained at large.

'We will find them,' she said.

An initial police investigation traced the origin of the explosion to a pile of unidentified objects next to the bank and ruled out the possibility that the blast was caused by a gas or fuel leak, Xinhua reported.

China Construction Bank released a statement on its website yesterday, saying that no money was stolen during the incident.

There was some damage to the bank building, in Chuxiong Street in Hongshan district, and a number of staff suffered minor cuts from flying shards of glass.

A spokesman for Wuhan's fire department wrote on its microblog on Thursday that the bank was robbed by suspects using explosives, but the entry was deleted yesterday, probably to fall in line with the official statement of uncertainty.

Guangshan Middle School was close to the explosion, but its administration office did not answer phone calls yesterday and its website was down.

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