Three persons were killed and over 20 injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a building in Northeast China, the state-run media said on Monday.
Firefighters had contained a blaze at the site by 10 am, four hours after the explosion ripped through a building at Changyi Community in Jilin Province on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.
Firefighters said the explosion might have been triggered after a motorist started his car in a garage on the ground floor of a four-story annex to a tower block office building owned.
The massive explosion shattered all the windows of the 16-story office building, and damaged three surrounding apartment buildings, where residents are busy clearing debris from their homes.
About 200 to 300 residents are waiting outdoors in temperatures of minus 25 degrees Celsius for authorities to allocate plastic film to fix in their empty window frames.
A local resident said they called the gas supplier, the Jilin subsidiary of CNPC Kunlun Natural Gas Co Ltd, to repair the pipeline after it developed a leak on Sunday.
The explosion has disrupted power and gas supplies to the communities, but heating and water supplies are still operating.
It was the second natural gas blast in the city in a month. On December 24, an explosion had occurred in a community on Xuzhou road, about 10 km from on Monday's site of blast. There were no reports of fatalities in that accident, but several people were injured. The local authorities have yet to reveal the results of an investigation into the accident.