Gas cylinder blast kills three, injures one in Afghanistan’s Khost province
Three people, all women from the same family, were killed and another was injured after a gas cylinder exploded inside a house in eastern Afghanistan's Khost province on Thursday evening, provincial police spokesman Tahir Ehrar said Friday.
Kabul: Three people, all women from the same family, were killed and another was injured after a gas cylinder exploded inside a house in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province on Thursday evening, provincial police spokesman Tahir Ehrar said Friday. The ill-fated family was using a gas heater to warm their house in the chilly winter weather, but the cylinder of the heater exploded due to gas leakage, causing the fatalities, the official added.
A male member of the affected family who was badly injured has been taken to the hospital, the official added, Xinhua News Agency reported. People in post-war Afghanistan, where there is no modern heating system, often use gas cylinders or wooden stoves to keep their houses warm during freezing winters, but deadly accidents sometimes occur due to gas leakage and explosion.
Several weeks ago, a gas cylinder blast left two women dead and injured two children in Spin Ghar district of eastern Nangarhar province. Earlier on January 14, over a dozen employees were injured as a gas cylinder blasted due to gas leakage inside a hotel in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, said a provincial police statement.
The incident occurred inside the hotel in Batikot district on January 14, injuring 14 employees of the hotel, with some in critical condition, the statement added. Blaming the carelessness of the hotel employees for the incident, the statement noted that police personnel had taken the injured persons to the nearby health center.
Afghans mostly use wooden stoves and gas cylinders to keep their residences warm in chilly winter, but the traditional old-fashioned heating system often ends in catastrophe as gas leakage or carbon monoxide poisoning sometimes kills or hurts its users.
In December last year, one person was killed and another sustained injury as a gas cylinder exploded in a shop in the northern Afghanistan Kunduz province, provincial police spokesman Jumadin Khaksar said. The blast took place in a blacksmith shop in the provincial capital Kunduz city, leaving one person dead on the spot and injuring another, Khaksar added.
