Tesla Cybertruck explodes outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas

AFP/APP

Los Angeles: A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside a hotel belonging to US President-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas, killing at least one person and wounding seven, police said Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating any links between the Las Vegas explosion and an attack earlier Wednesday in New Orleans, where a truck plowed into a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing at least 15.

However, Biden cautioned that no such links had yet been found. The FBI and local law enforcement said they believed the Tesla blast was an isolated incident, but they were investigating whether it was an “act of terrorism.”

The electric vehicle — made by the company owned by Trump backer Elon Musk pulled up to the Trump International Hotel’s glass entrance before a “large explosion,” Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters.

Video footage shows the stainless steel truck parked at the hotel entrance before bursting into flames, followed by smaller explosions that appeared similar to fireworks.

McMahill said there was “one deceased individual inside the Cybertruck,” while seven people received “minor” injuries. He said the hotel had been evacuated.

He told a later news conference that the back of the truck contained gasoline and camping fuel canisters, as well as “large firework mortars.”

McMahill also said the fact that it was a Cybertruck “really limited the damage… because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out,” noting that the glass doors of the hotel, just a few feet away, “were not even broken by that blast.”

Biden said authorities were probing “any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans.”

“Thus far, there’s nothing to report on that score,” he said.

FBI agent Jeremy Schwartz described the Las Vegas blast as “an isolated incident.”

He said that an FBI joint terrorism task force was conducting the investigation with two main goals — to confirm the identity of the “subject involved in this incident” and to determine “whether this was an act of terrorism or not.”