Exploding backpack kills man on Vegas strip

[SecretStash]

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- A backpack exploded in a parking garage attached to a Las Vegas hotel early Monday, killing a man who had picked it up, authorities said.

The man had removed the backpack from atop his car when it exploded shortly after 4 a.m. on the second floor of a parking behind the Luxor hotel-casino, said Officer Bill Cassell, a police spokesman.

Police said the blast was not a terrorist act, but an apparent murder of a hotel employee.

"We believe the victim of this event was the intended target," Cassell said. He said another hotel employee narrowly escaped injury.

Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage Inc., which owns the Luxor, said he could not confirm the person killed was an employee.

There was little damage around the vehicle and the hotel was not evacuated, police and a hotel official said.

Aerial video showed no apparent damage to the parking structure, where entrances were blocked while police, firefighters and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents investigated. No further information was immediately available.

The Luxor is a pyramid-shaped hotel at the south end of the wide road known as the Las Vegas Strip, which houses many of the city's hotels and casinos.