At least three people died while 17 others were wounded on Monday after a residential building located in Karachi’s Machhar Colony collapsed due to a gas cylinder explosion, police and rescue officials said.

Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed confirmed the casualties and injuries to Dawn.com. She said the condition of four wounded persons was critical.

South Deputy Inspector General of Police Syed Asad Raza told Dawn.com that the blast occurred because of “gas cylinder leakage and mishandling” inside a gas cylinder shop situated in the two-storey residential building at around 10:30am.

Resultantly, he said three people died while around 17 others were wounded, some with serious injuries.

The whole building was destroyed, he said, adding that 26 cylinders were taken away by a team of the bomb disposal squad to an open area for safe handling.

Dr Syed said that three bodies were brought to Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK). She said a total of 21 persons were brought to the hospital with some of them facing suffocation issues and breathing problems.

The police surgeon said among those was a four-five-month-old baby who was recovered from the debris but miraculously did not receive any injury. The surgeon said that two minors and a girl were among five persons who also suffered burns.

Dr Sabir Memon, executive director of the CHK trauma centre, told Dawn.com that among the four critically injured was a three-month-old boy who received head injuries.

He said the three other critically injured men were shifted to the intensive care unit.

In October, two people were injured in a huge explosion that occurred inside a pizza joint in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. The police had blamed the accumulation of cooking gas for the explosion.