At least two person were killed and eleven were injured in an explosion at a scout center affiliated with the Shia Amal Movement near Sidon in southern Lebanon, officials told Reuters early on Tuesday.
The blast demolished the building and army personnel were searching through the rubble for any further casualties, sources added. The explosion also damaged the town hall nearby.
One security source told Reuters the explosion was not an act of sabotage, without disclosing further details.
On December 10, a large blast rocked a Palestinian camp in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, injuring about a dozen people, according to rescue workers on scene and a Palestinian source inside the camp.
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that the blast emanated from a Hamas weapons depot in the Burj al-Shemali camp and a judge had ordered security forces to launch an investigation.
(New York Explosion)An explosion was heard in New York’s Times Square after three manholes caught fire on Sunday evening, triggering mass panic and sending crowds running, according to local news reports and videos circulating on Twitter.
No injuries were reported as a result of the incident, according to Fox News Digital which cited preliminary reports from the New York Police Department (NYPD) and New York Fire Department (FDNY).
Firefighters at the scene discovered elevated carbon monoxide levels at an 18-story office building, near the site of the explosion, and were in the process of venting the area, a spokesperson from the FDNY told Fox News Digital.
According to local media Spectrum News NY1, the fire caused parts of Times Square to be shut down.
The videos posted on social media showed people running away in a state of panic, after the sound of the explosion alarmed them as they seemed to not know what was happening.“There’s just a huge explosion,” witness Brad Ball told Fox News. “It didn’t sound extraordinarily close, but definitely was an explosion.”
Celebrity chef Gary Maclean tweeted: “This isn’t my normal tweet but tonight I was 100 [feet] away from an explosion in Times Square, I took this video a few seconds after. I believe it was a fire under ground that blew up. It’s a miracle no one was hurt.”
Cable failure was apparently the cause behind the explosion, energy company Con Edison said in a company statement according to Spectrum News NY1.
“At this time, there have been no customer outages, and no reports of injuries or property damage. Our crews remain on location,” the statement read.
Manhole explosions are common and are often caused by frayed wires from aging, corrosive chemicals or rats biting them. These wires often carry around 13,000 volts of electricity and once they heat up the paper, lead and rubber insulation, they can causes fires which releases gases.
The pressure from the gas then builds up inside the manhole and electrical wires arc like a bolt of lightning and ignite the gases, causing a powerful explosion. Depending on the amount of gas-pressure built up inside the manhole, the cover – which often weighs between 35 to 135 kg – can flip over and be launched several feet in the air causing either a fire or an explosion, depending on the gas pressure level.
(Explosion in Baku Club)An explosion struck a nightclub in the capital of Azerbaijan and set off a fire early Sunday, killing one person and injuring 31, officials said.
The explosion at the Location Baku club was believed to have been caused by a gas leak but the investigation was ongoing, Interior Ministry spokesman Ehsan Zahidov told The Associated Press.
The prosecutor general’s office reported the one death and said 31 people suffered various injuries. Health Ministry spokesman Parviz Abubekirov told the AP that 24 people had been hospitalized, most of them with burns.
The emergency services issued a statement saying firefighters were called to the club in central Baku at 3 a.m. and extinguished the fire before it could spread.
Video posted on social media showed dozens of people in a panic, some of them injured, outside the club, which appeared to have been heavily damaged by the explosion.
