A gas cylinder explosion on Saturday killed six people and injured two others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mardan, according to police and rescue officials.
Mardan District Police Officer Zahoor Babar Afridi confirmed the casualties and told Dawn.com, “The explosion was caused by a gas cylinder.”
The spokesperson for KP Rescue 1122 Bilal Ahmad Faizi said that a cylinder explosion in Mardan’s Aram Colony caused the roof of a two-story house to collapse. He said, “Six people were killed and two girls were seriously injured in the accident.”
He added that the rescue teams reached the site as soon as they received information about an alleged explosion inside the house.
Rescue 1122 teams continued rescue operations and rescued eight people, including a woman and children, buried under the rubble, he said.
Mardan Deputy Commissioner Azmatullah Wazir, District Emergency Officer Syed Shoaib Mansoor and Assistant Commissioner Junaid Khalid were present at the scene and supervised the entire operation, he added.
He also said that over a hundred Rescue 1122 personnel participated and completed the operation in seven hours, removing the dead and injured people and transferring them to the Mardan Medical Complex.
Incidents of fire caused by leakage and explosion of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders occur routinely across the country.
Following an LPG tanker explosion in Punjab’s Multan earlier this year that killed at least 19 and injured over a dozen others, the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat ordered a probe into the sale of adulterated LPG.
In February, twelve people were injured after a gas cylinder exploded in a roadside cafe near the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) in Peshawar, a rescue official said.