An explosion ripped through an apartment building in southern Ukraine overnight, killing nine people, including a child, and at least 40 were missing, officials said on Thursday.
The Emergencies Ministry said 20 residents had been pulled out alive from the shattered five-storey block in the Black Sea resort of Yevpatoria in the Crimea peninsula. Up to 40 flats might have been destroyed or damaged, a ministry spokesperson said.
The cause of the explosion on Wednesday night had not been established yet but it was ”quite possible that there had been containers with oxygen or acetylene stored in the building”, said the spokesperson.
Emergencies Minister Volodymyr Shandra told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television: ”There can still be between 40 and 80 people under the rubble.”
Officials said the blast sent concrete cascading down on two entrances to the building.
Cranes were being used in the rescue efforts.
Casualties caused by gas blasts in often crumbling apartment buildings are common occurrences in former Soviet republics, particularly in winter when residents use more heating.
One such blast in October 2007 killed 15 residents in Ukraine’s central city of Dnipropetrovsk. – Reuters