QUETTA: A minor was killed while four others were injured in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday by a powerful explosion triggered by a gas leak inside a home, police confirmed.
The explosion occurred on the rooftop of a building in Quetta’s Jinnah Town area when a family attempted to light a gas heater. Police said unknown to the family, the room where the heater was kept was filled with gas that had leaked.
“The rooftop of the building has been completely destroyed due to the intensity of the explosion,” Station House Officer (SHO) Jinnah Town Ijaz Mehmood told Arab News.
“A four-year-old girl named Isma Bibi was killed after the rubble of the building fell on a slum located under the building.”
He said investigation teams, including the Bomb Disposal Squad, have been probing the incident and as per the initial report, the blast was caused as the room was filled with leaked gas.
Four others injured in the explosion were shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta’s trauma center.
“Four injured, including a woman, are now being treated inside the burn ward while the body of the minor girl was shifted to the morgue,” Dr. Waseem Baig, a spokesman for the provincial health department, said in a statement.
Explosions caused by gas leaks are common in Balochistan during the bitter winters, where many homes do not have fixed gas outages. The unpredictable gas pressure at odd hours of the day or night causes houses to sometimes be flooded with gas accidentally left on.
Every year, residents of Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province hold protests against the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), a private organization responsible for providing gas supply in Pakistan’s Sindh and Balochistan provinces.
According to data compiled by Arab News, 25 people were killed in Balochistan from Oct. 2022 to Dec.2022 in incidents involving gas leaks. At least 15 people suffered severe burn injuries from three separate gas explosions in Quetta during December 2023.
Pakistan discovered natural gas reserves in Balochistan’s Sui area in Dera Bugti district back in 1952 but the province only started receiving natural gas in 1970. Baloch nationalist parties and armed separatist groups accuse the Pakistani state of exploiting the natural resources of Balochistan, leaving locals deprived of their natural wealth. The state denies this.
The SSGC has more than 300,000 registered gas consumers in Quetta and has been providing 210 million cubic feet of gas to the population of Balochistan.
