At least 11 people have been injured following an explosion at a rock bar in eastern Ukraine, the country's Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday.
The blast took place Sunday evening at the Stena, or Wall, club in the the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the ministry said in an online statement, without speculating on the causes of the explosion.
While Ukrainian news site Glavnoye blamed a gas leak, club director Mikhail Ozerov told the Interfax news agency that the explosion was caused by a bomb left in a bag, which some customers had spotted at the bar just minutes before the blast.
Ozerov said that the bomb was packed with bolts and other bits of metal and that the explosion was politically motivated, Interfax reported.
"We did a lot of fund-raising for refugees, for servicemen, for orphans," he was quoted as saying. "We had no business competitors. Nobody had ever pressured us in business affairs."
The club was renowned for its management's pro-Ukrainian stance and was popular among fighters returning from the conflict against pro-Moscow separatists in southeastern Ukraine, Glavnoye reported.
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