An explosion has rocked a central Darwin shopping complex injuring 13 people after a man threw a fire bomb through the doorway of a bank.
Nine News reporter Justin O’Brien was on the scene and said customers were being treated for burns and smoke inhalation.
A man surrendered himself to Darwin police shortly after 11am.
Hours later, dozens of police and emergency services workers are still sifting through the debris of the explosion which occurred at TIO Banking Office in the Woolworths complex in Smith Street.
One person had become trapped in the rubble but was later extracted.
Police at the scene told ninemsn that the centre was crowded at the time of the explosion, while witnesses said they could still smell kerosene at the scene.
NT fire brigade Darwin station officer Dave Lines told AAP the supermarket was ablaze when fire crews arrived but it was already mostly controlled by the supermarket's sprinkler system.
He said the police bomb squad did not send in their bomb detection robot because fire crews had established that the fire was caused by unleaded petrol and fireworks.
He said it appeared someone had pushed a shopping trolley containing three jerry cans of petrol and a cluster of fireworks into the supermarket.
He said the explosions caused a relatively significant amount of damage to the supermarket and he expected it would need to be refitted.
Charmaine Burton, who was working in a nearby office, said she heard several loud evenly-spaced bangs that sounded like a semi-automatic rifle.
"Police were at the doors calling ‘if you can hear me, come to my voice’," she said.
"There was an accelerant type smell, like kero, or a diesel fuel sort of smell."
The main street of Darwin has been roped off while police clear the scene after around 100 office workers descended on the site when they heard the explosion.
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