 |
Cooking
gas cylinder exploded in restaurant (Image: Google maps)
|
At least 104 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.
"There
are 104 confirmed deaths at the moment. Eighty-two postmortems have been
carried out and 22 are still pending," M. L. Gond, an inspector in charge
of Jhabua's police control room, told AFP by phone.
"My
information is that 60 people are injured, but the number could be
higher," he said.
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.
"It
looks like someone had stored those explosives, the ones used in mining, in one
of the buildings. But only further investigation will reveal the exact
details," Alava told AFP from the site.
She
added that the blast knocked down a neighbouring building and damaged several
others.
Another
district police official, Anurag Mishra, cited the restaurant's proximity to a
busy bus stand as a reason for the high number of casualties.
Madhya
Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan took to Twitter to express his
sadness at the loss of life.
"The
Jhabua tragedy is heart wrenching. I offer my condolences to the families of
the victims and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured," Chouhan
said.
He
offered compensation of 200,000 rupees ($3,020) to the families of the dead and
50,000 rupees ($755) to help the injured victims.
Chouhan
has also ordered an inquiry into the matter.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi followed suit and conveyed his condolences on the
micro-blogging site.
"Extremely
pained at the loss of lives due to the cylinder blast in Jhabua," Modi
said.
Domestic
gas cylinder explosions are common in India, where safety standards are
relatively poor.
But although reports of
fatal accidents from cylinder blasts are frequent, mass casualties are unusual.
No comments:
Post a Comment