KIEV, Ukraine — An explosion tore through a medical university in the city of Chernivtsy in western Ukraine on Thursday killing one person and wounding two, local police and prosecutors said.

Police were investigating the blast and were looking into the possibility it may have been caused by a bomb, a police spokeswoman said.

Regional prosecutors said a 62-year-old man had been killed in the incident, which they said probably involved a hand grenade.

"According to preliminary information, the dead person was at odds with a staff member [of the university] over a plot of land . . .," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The blast also wounded a university teacher and a student but their lives were not in danger, it said.

Bomb attacks are rare in the former Soviet republic of 45 million.

The most recent one, last April, wounded 30 people in the city of Dnipropetrovsk.

Its alleged perpetrators are now on trial and accused of trying to extort money from the government by threatening to carry out further attacks.