The blast in the basement flat on Tuesday night killed the 32-year-old man and caused extensive damage to other apartments and cars parked nearby, Thessaloniki police said in a statement.

Thirteen grenades and four machine guns as well as other weapons and ammunition were found in the flat, but officials said the explosion was too strong to have been caused by a grenade.

The case has been entrusted to Greece's anti-terrorism squad.

Police said they could not immediately identify the victim as the blast had blown away one of his arms and severed the fingers off the other.

But an asylum application in the name of a 32-year-old Turkish Kurd was found in the flat, which had been rented out by another Turkish-born Kurd.

In August, a court in Thessaloniki ruled to extradite to Germany a 42-year-old Turkish trade unionist, Gulaferit Unsal, who was under a European arrest warrant.

Unsal is a suspected member of the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, considered an extremist group by Turkey and the EU.

She and a compatriot had been arrested in Thessaloniki in July in a raid by anti-terrorist police looking for smuggled arms.

Unsal's compatriot who was suspected of using forged papers was later found innocent and released.