- Marc Bartra hospitalised
- Club confirms match will be played on Wednesday
Borussia Dortmund’s game against Monaco has been postponed until Wednesday after their team bus was involved in an explosion ahead of their Champions League quarter-final tie, with defender Marc Bartra reported to have been taken to hospital.
A statement from local police said: “In the run-up to the Champions League match of BVB against AS Monaco, there was an explosion near the BVB team teambus shortly after 7pm. The location of the event is Wittbräuckerstraße/Schirrmannweg in Dortmund-Höchsten.
“According to current knowledge the wheels of the bus (whole or partial) burst and one person was injured. It is not yet possible to say exactly what the explosion was or exactly where something exploded.”
A tweet from the German club’s official Twitter account an hour before kick-off at the Westfalenstadion had first alerted news of an incident. “At our bus departure, an incident has occurred. One person was injured. More information to follow,” it read.
A later tweet read: “A bomb exploded at the team bus next to the hotel. The players are safe. There is no danger at the stadium” before the club confirmed the match has been rearranged for Wednesday, kicking off at 6.45pm local time.
Borussia Dortmund(@BVB)
Bombenexplosion am Mannschaftsbus am Mannschaftshotel. Spieler in Sicherheit. Keine Gefahr im und am Stadion. Weitere Infos folgen.#bvbasm
Reports in Germany named the injured person as Spain international Bartra, with the 26-year-old having been taken to a local hospital with superficial cuts to his arm. According to Bild, three explosive devices were deposited on the street in front of the bus although police have yet to give any more details.
More to follow…
Since you’re here …
… we’ve got a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever, but far fewer are paying for it. Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much more secure.
