Tragedy: Gas cylinder blast kills 104 at India’s restaurant

Explosion knocked down a nearby building and damaged several others in Madhya Pradesh

NEW DELHI: At least 104 people died when a cooking gas cylinder exploded in a packed restaurant in India's central Madhya Pradesh state 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 added.

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 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.

Authorities suspect the intensity of the explosion may have been compounded by detonators and gelatin sticks, an explosive material used in mining.

"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.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2015.