Gas explosion at Mexico children's hospital, one reported dead: Official

January 30, 2015 | 09:42

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A gas explosion ripped through a children's hospital in Mexico City on Thursday (Jan 29), killing at least two people and injuring 54 more, including 22 children, officials said.

File photo of an ambulance. (Photo: AFP/Yuri Cortez)

MEXICO CITY: A gas explosion ripped through a children's hospital in Mexico City on Thursday (Jan 29), killing at least two people and injuring 54 more, including 22 children, officials said.

Firefighters toiled in the rubble of the maternity and children's hospital, which partly collapsed after a gas tanker truck blew up outside as it was making a delivery, officials said. "We have to conduct an evacuation for safety because a lot of the people are babies in the crib area," Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told MVS Radio.

Fausto Lugo, the capital's civil protection chief, said two people died and that it was "very probable" that more were trapped in the rubble. Mancera said one of the dead was a woman found under the collapsed structure. He said the injured were not in serious condition and were being transferred to other hospitals.

Television images showed people with bloodied faces being carried to ambulances. Around 40 per cent of the hospital was destroyed, Mancera said.

AFP

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