[tanknetter]

Most likely it was us. may have been something special such as aircraft mounted lasers.

Doubtful.

An explosion would create a large debris field, basically think of it as a massive flak burst. It would threaten all sorts of other orbiting satellites, including our own.

The only reason why we'd do something like this is if the satellite's as-is state posed a hazard to other orbiting objects, or ground-based objects that could be hit in the event of a deorbit (like that one the USN shot down years back).

[steve86]

"An explosion would create a large debris field"

The explosion has caused at least 43 pieces of debris to scatter into orbit, which are now being tracked by the US Air Force.