Two South Koreans hospitalized in gas leak blast in northern Vietnam

At around 8:20 a.m., a group of people were fixing a three-story shophouse at a building in Vinh Yen City to make it a restaurant, when a loud explosion shook the ground.

“The blast was deafening and produced a lot of pressure. Objects located even 500 m from the house shook,” a witness said.

 

 

Two South Koreans hospitalized in gas leak blast in northern Vietnam

Video ghép bài vụ nổ Vĩnh Phúc

Several workers near the site of the explosion got their clothes and skin burnt. Some even had shrapnel embedded into their body, blood covering their back. A person sitting inside a truck parked in front of a house was also injured by flying debris.

Among the eight victims were two South Koreans and six Vietnamese. They were all taken to the Vinh Phuc General Hospital, and the South Koreans were subsequently transferred to the National Burns Hospital in Hanoi, a representative of the Vinh Yen People’s Committee said.

At the scene, all the glass in the front of the three-story shophouse were shattered and flung away as far as 35 m. Inside the house, objects were blasted around. On the pavements, tables, chairs and vehicles could be seen lying around.

The Vinh Phuc firefighting department deployed two vehicles, along with dozens of officers, to the site. An initial investigation revealed that 10 minutes before the blast happened, dentists at a nearby shophouse smelled gases leaking and warned the workers, but they did not heed the warning.