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ROSARIO (AFP) – A powerful blast ripped through a ten-story apartment building in Argentina’s third largest city Tuesday, setting it ablaze and leaving at least five dead and 50 injured.
Firefighters said a furnace the building in the downtown Rosario apparently exploded.
“So far there are five people dead and at least 50 others with injuries of varying degrees of severity,” provincial health minister Miguel Cappiello said on local television.
The blast wiped away the front of the edifice, leaving the insides of people’s homes and gutted balconies visible from the street below.
Scenes of panic abounded as sirens wailed and people ran through the streets or gawked at the ruined structure, some of them crying.
Shards of shattered glass littered the streets.
Mayor Monica Fein said ambulances were on the scene to help people burned in the fire, which she said stemmed from a gas leak.
As it was not immediately possible to cut off the gas supply to the building, people within a radius of two kilometers of it were evacuated.
“The shock wave was tremendous,” the superintendent of a building 200 meters from the site of the explosion told the TV station C5N.
The blast sent flames roaring through the building, as fire truck sirens sounded and traffic clogged Rosario’s city center.
Windows shattered in buildings in a radius of several hundred meters from the blast site. The area includes shops, schools and banks.
Rosario is home to 1.1 million people and is located 300 kilometers (180 miles) north of Buenos Aires. It is Argentina’s main port for farm exports.
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