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Forty-four Killed, Three Injured in Tokyo Blast
At least 44 people were killed and three others injured as a powerful explosion ripped through a mahjong parlor in a Tokyo entertainment early Saturday, triggering a fire that gutted part of the six-floor building, Kyodo News reported.
Fire officials said forty seven people were rescued from the building and sent to hospitals.
The blast, which took place at around 1 a.m. (local time), ripped through a third-floor mahjong parlor in Kabukicho in Shinjuku Ward, tearing open a 50-centimeter by 1.5-meter hole on the outside wall.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but it happened after an employee at the mahjong parlor opened a door, police said.
The explosion triggered a fire, destroying sections of the third and the fourth floor of the building. The fire was put under control shortly after 6 a.m., fire officials said.
The building, which houses a number of entertainment shops, including restaurants and game parlor, has four stories above ground and two below ground, with 480 square meters in total floor space.
Firefighters took more than three hours to get the victims out of the building.
Three men fell from the building while trying to flee the scene, fire officials said.
A number of people who fled to the rooftop were later rescued by firefighters, many of the survivors had soot on their face.
The scale of human casualties in the Kabukicho explosion was the largest to hit Tokyo since 1982 when 33 people were killed and 29 others injured in a fire that gutted Hotel New Japan in the Akasaka district.
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