German authorities say a suspicious package containing nails that led to a bomb scare on a Christmas market in Potsdam was part of a blackmailing plot against a delivery company.

Brandenburg state Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter told reporters Sunday the package was part of a scheme to extort millions of euros from delivery company DHL. It was delivered Friday to a pharmacy on the same street as the market in Potsdam and later destroyed in a controlled explosion.

Schroeter said it most likely didn’t target the market.

 

Officials said the package’s sender was still at large and that an online company in Frankfurt an der Oder had received a similar package “a while ago.”

 

Police initially said the device wasn’t viable, but now think the package could have exploded.
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