India Gas Cylinder Blast Death Toll Hits 85: Police
(MENAFN- Arab Times) At least 85 people died when a cooking gas cylinder exploded in a packed restaurant in India's central Madhya Pradesh state on Saturday morning, police said, with the blast shattering nearby buildings.
The death toll rose rapidly from an initial count of 20 after rescuers recovered dozens more bodies from the debris of the destroyed restaurant and neighbouring structures in the town of Petlawad in Jhabua district. "Earlier we thought it was 104 based on various reports coming to us but now our own official information says 85 confirmed deaths," M. L. Gond, an inspector in charge of Jhabua's police control room, told AFP.
Arun Kumar Sharma, chief medical officer of Jhabua district, told AFP by phone from the local hospital that about 100 people were injured in the blast, 20 of them seriously. The blast occurred at around 8:30 am local time (0300 GMT) at the restaurant where many office workers and schoolchildren were having breakfast, senior district police official Seema Alava said.
Television footage showed scores of people and rescue workers using their bare hands to shift mangled heaps of steel and concrete of the ruined buildings while police cordoned off the area. Bodies covered in dust and ash lay in the streets alongside the twisted wreckage of burned vehicles. Authorities suspect the intensity of the explosion may have been compounded by detonators and gelatin sticks, an explosive material used in mining, being stored either in the restaurant building or the neighbouring one.
The death toll rose rapidly from an initial count of 20 after rescuers recovered dozens more bodies from the debris of the destroyed restaurant and neighbouring structures in the town of Petlawad in Jhabua district. "Earlier we thought it was 104 based on various reports coming to us but now our own official information says 85 confirmed deaths," M. L. Gond, an inspector in charge of Jhabua's police control room, told AFP.
Arun Kumar Sharma, chief medical officer of Jhabua district, told AFP by phone from the local hospital that about 100 people were injured in the blast, 20 of them seriously. The blast occurred at around 8:30 am local time (0300 GMT) at the restaurant where many office workers and schoolchildren were having breakfast, senior district police official Seema Alava said.
Television footage showed scores of people and rescue workers using their bare hands to shift mangled heaps of steel and concrete of the ruined buildings while police cordoned off the area. Bodies covered in dust and ash lay in the streets alongside the twisted wreckage of burned vehicles. Authorities suspect the intensity of the explosion may have been compounded by detonators and gelatin sticks, an explosive material used in mining, being stored either in the restaurant building or the neighbouring one.
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