A gas explosion at a building housing an ice-cream factory in eastern Pakistan early yesterday killed at least 25 people and wounded 20, police said. Rescue workers were sifting the rubble for about a dozen others feared trapped inside.
The four-story building in Lahore, that also housed workers' quarters and low-end apartments, collapsed in the blast.
Police said a truck was offloading the gas cylinders when the explosion happened at around 3:00am in the densely populated Allama Iqbal Town area of Lahore. The truck and a nearby car were both obliterated.
PHOTO: AFP
City police chief Aftab Cheema said the dead included eight people from the same family, who were sleeping in an apartment on the building's second story.
At least nine ice-cream street vendors and salesmen at an adjoining outlet who were sleeping there were found dead, he said. Their bodies were badly mutilated.
Three or four nearby homes and several vehicles were also damaged.
Mohammed Afzal, the official in charge of the rescue operation, said the blast was heard around Lahore.
"We have been told that dozens of people were inside the building at the time of the blast. We are trying to save as many people as possible," he said.
The building housed a small ice cream factory whose 12 to 15 workers usually slept on the front lawn but had stayed inside last night because of heavy rain.
"First I heard a big explosion, and then saw the roof falling. I don't know what happened next, but when I opened my eyes, I was on a hospital bed," said one of the workers, Munib Ahmad, 25, recovering at Lahore's Jinnah Hospital.
His head was bandaged.
Other survivors at the hospital said the building owner had ignored repeated requests to move the gas cylinders that were stored in the basement.
"We always feared that it would happen one day," said Sardar Ahmed, 34, who was sleeping on the second floor when the blast occurred. "He never paid any attention to our requests."
Television footage showed dazed survivors in ragged clothes being pulled from underneath huge concrete slabs.
Hysterical relatives of the dead and missing wailed and tore at their hair nearby.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS