An explosion Saturday outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic is being investigated as an "intentional act of violence," the California city's police chief said. One person was killed, the Desert Sun reports. The victim was not immediately identified. City officials said the blast occurred shortly before 11am either inside or near a car parked by American Reproductive Centers, per the Los Angeles Times. The building is a fertility clinic and in vitro fertilization lab across the street from Desert Regional Medical Center.
Dr. Maher Abdallah, who runs the fertility clinic, told the AP that all staff members were safe and accounted for. "I really have no clue what happened," Abdallah said. "Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients." The clinic posted on social media that no eggs or embryos were damaged and that it will be reopen Monday. An FBI post said agents are at the site along with "investigators, bomb technicians & an evidence response team." Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills said the explosion appears to be "an isolated incident," per the Sun.
Other buildings were damaged, and the force of the explosion was felt more than two miles away. The blast caved in the clinic's roof and blew a wide debris field across a sidewalk and four lanes of the street on the other side of the structure, per the AP. A man who was in a restaurant nearby, who has a background in aviation, said the explosion caused such a boom that he ran toward the sound thinking a helicopter might have crashed. (More Palm Springs stories.)
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