US officials investigate blast at civil rights office in Colorado

US law enforcement officials are investigating whether the fire-bombing of the offices of a civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in Colorado is a hate crime.

The FBI says it is also considering whether the blast on Tuesday at 10.45am at the local NAACP office in Colorado Springs, the state’s second largest city, was an act of domestic terror.

The blast on an outside wall of the office, from a small make-shift improvised device, caused no injuries and only minor damage to the office because the device failed to ignite a can of petrol placed when it was detonated. The exterior of the building was scorched by the explosion.

"Regardless if this act is determined to be a biased motivated crime, the law enforcement community in El Paso County does not condone this or any act of violence," county officials said on Thursday.

The NAACP office was run by local volunteers organising recruitment drives for members and prayer breakfasts. The chapter, which has been active in Colorado Springs since 1920, was involved in local protests over the deaths of unarmed black men by white police officers last year in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City.

"It really saddens me," Henry Allen jnr, president of the NAACP's chapter, told the New York Times. "I do look at the Fifties and Sixties when there were bombings, there were lynchings . . . When those who say that civil rights is no longer an issue, we're going back to that destructive mentality."

The FBI has been trying to determine whether the one-storey building was in fact the intended target of Tuesday’s attack.

“It has also not yet been determined if the motive was a hate crime, domestic terrorism, a personal act of violence against a specific individual, or other motives as there are numerous individuals and entities tied to the building in the vicinity of the explosion,” an FBI spokeswoman said.

John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Georgia who was an influential figure in the 1960s civil rights movement, said in a message posted on Twitter than he was "deeply troubled by the bombing in Colorado". He added: "It reminds me of another period. These stories cannot be swept under the rug."