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.
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