Five killed in shopping mall blast
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Your support makes all the difference.An explosion tore through Finland's second largest shopping mall yesterday, killing five people and injuring 30.
Officials suspected gas cylinders caused the explosion at the enormous Myyrmanni Shopping Mall in Vantaa, Helsinki. But police also said a bomb could not be ruled out.
Jyrki Karjalainen, director of City Con, which manages the mall, said normally there should not have been any gas cylinders or containers in the building, which houses 138 shops and restaurants. The blast happened in a spiral staircase between the second and third floors of the mall, packed with 2,000 shoppers at the time.
Leif Johansson, deputy chief fire officer at the Vantaa Fire and Rescue department, said: "We cannot say for sure if it was a bomb but we are looking into it. The second floor of the building collapsed as a result of the explosion."
He added that ten of the people who had been injured were in a serious condition.
Vantaa's police chief, Inspector Seppo Kujala, said it was too early to determine the cause of the blast but a bomb had not been ruled out.
Police and firefighters and more than a dozen ambulances went to the scene. Television footage showed injured people being treated by ambulance services and blood on the mall's staircases.
Police bomb squads with tracker dogs were surveying the area last night.
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