LAS VEGAS — A device left on top of a car in a casino parking garage exploded early yesterday, killing a man as he attempted to remove it, authorities said.The man was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the 4 a.m. blast, police said. Another person who was with the man was not injured, police spokesman Bill Cassell said.

Police said the blast behind the Luxor hotel-casino was directed at the man, who worked at a business inside the pyramid-shaped hotel, and was not a terrorist act or a mob hit. Police did not identify the victim or the person who was with him.

Investigators were reviewing hotel surveillance videotapes for clues.

“We believe the victim of this event was the intended target,” Cassell said. He denied initial reports that a backpack had exploded, and dismissed suggestions that the slaying had ties to organised crime.

Cassell said no threat was made against the Luxor or its employees.

The man who was killed “worked inside the Luxor, but we do not think he was on the hotel payroll,” he said. He characterised the slaying as “a homicide with an unusual weapon,” but declined to describe the device.

Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage Inc., which owns the Luxor, said the person killed was not a company employee.

“Police do not believe the resort was targeted in any way,” Absher said, adding that the Luxor was not damaged and that — except for the top floor of the two-story parking garage — the resort was continuing normal operations.

There was little damage around the vehicle and the hotel was not evacuated, police and a hotel official said.

Entrances were sealed after the explosion and authorities went vehicle to vehicle with bomb-sniffing dogs. People were allowed to remove their vehicles after they had been inspected, Absher said.

The explosion happened in the parking garage behind the Luxor, a hotel at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, a main road where many of the city’s casinos are located.