Blast goes off near World Economic Forum

A small blast has broken windows at a hotel near where the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos, Switzerland.

Nobody was injured, said police spokesman Thomas Hobi.

The blast happened in a storage room of the Posthotel Morosani shortly after 9am local time.

Police are investigating.

The hotel is just over a mile from the main venue of the annual gathering in the Alpine ski resort of Davos.

A Forum-related lunch focusing on organised crime, called “Criminals Without Borders” was scheduled at the hotel at noon, with speakers including Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Robert Wainwright, the director of Europol, or European Police.

There is tight security at the World Economic Forum as left-wing groups plan to hold a protest this weekend against the annual meeting of political and business leaders.

Anonymous leaflets circulated at a demonstration last week in the north-eastern Swiss town of St Gallen urged activists to “Smash (the) WEF.”

The leaflet says: “Let us fight together against the unbearable propaganda of capitalism.”

In previous years violent activists have stayed away from the resort and staged violent demonstrations elsewhere in Switzerland.