While one woman and two children were killed, 22 others were injured in a cylinder blast in a building in South East Delhi’s Sunlight Colony on Monday evening.
It was around 8.30 p.m. that the fire department received a call about a cylinder blast at a house in Bhagwan Nagar Chowk near Ashram. Arwa residents said the cylinder blast on the first floor of the house subsequently engulfed the other floors including a couple of rooms on the terrace.
“We sent 25 tenders to the spot and fire fighting is on,” said a fire official at 11 p.m.
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Since the house where the blast took place is a multi-storeyed one and the flames had engulfed almost the entire building, a couple of persons jumped off to save themselves and sustained injuries in the process.
The three-storey building was almost completely gutted. Eyewitnesses alleged that there was delay on the part of both the police and the fire department. All the injured were taken to AIIMS Trauma Centre and Jeevan Hospital and till 11.30 p.m. three deaths were confirmed by Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) M.S. Randhawa.
“My house is nearly 150 metres from the blast site but the sound was so loud that it was audible even from there,” said Vinay Kumar, a local recalling the moment when the blast took place. He added that it took police and fire brigade at least 40 minutes to reach the spot even as the nearest fire station was barely 500 metres away. Policemen there tried to counter the allegations saying there was contestation, a claim dismissed by locals. Ambrish Agrawal, another eyewitness, said the cylinder blast was followed by two more explosions in the same house — that of the inverter and AC compressor — further worsening the situation. Some among the injured were passersby trapped under huge fireballs.
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