news details |
|
|
| About 35 hurt in Prague Gas blast | | | PRAGUE: A powerful explosion in the historic center of the Czech capital city was the result of a leaky gas pipe, not a terrorist attack, and there were no deaths from the accident, the city's mayor said Monday.
"It was a gas explosion and from all available information it was not a terrorist explosion," Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda said at a news conference.
Mr. Svoboda scaled back the number of injured to 35 from earlier estimates of 40 and said there was only one serious injury. City officials said that six foreigners—two each from Kazakhstan and Portugal, as well as one German and one Slovak—were among the injured.
Police officials said search and rescue dogs have inspected the site three times over the course of the day and there are no cases of people being trapped in the rubble. There are no reports of missing persons or people unaccounted for, the police said.
The chief of regional police said that the explosion has caused a separate gas leak in a building adjacent to the building that was the epicenter of the morning explosion. That new leak is being secured.
Police spokesman Tomas Hulan said the explosion occurred at around 9:56 a.m. local time.
The blast was centered in the basement and lower floors of a multiple-story masonry building, and its sheer power pushed a brick-and-mortar load-bearing wall approximately 2 inches in the building.
Rescue workers help a woman who was injured in an explosion in Prague on Monday.
Additionally, some floors collapsed and part of the roof was blown away in the explosion that took place in a side street where there is little foot traffic. Zdenek Schwarz, head of Prague Emergency Medical Services, said that most injuries were caused by cuts from shattered glass in the wake of the blast.
The building is on a side street near the National Theater, the Prague FAMU film school and the popular Cafe Slavia on the east bank of the Vltava river. The area is a tourist destination and offers views of the Prague castle perching on the hill across the river.
Buildings located in a radius of more than hundred meters had their windows shattered, including the glass front of the New Scene building of the National Theater. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
