At least twenty people were killed and several others injured when gas cylinder blasts reduced a four-storey building to rubble in Pakistani city of Lahore late Monday night, police and rescuers said. There was a gas cylinder storage in the basement of the building, an ice factory on its ground floor while residential flats on other floors in Lahore's Allama Iqbal Town. Police believed that the explosion of a gas cylinder caused blasts of the entire go down, which brought the building down. They ruled out the possibility of terrorists_ involvement. Police said a number of people were yet trapped in the debris of the building. Rescuers are trying to pull them out. Seven members of the family of Malik Ashiq, the owner of the building, including two children and women, were also killed in the incident. A number of injured persons, rescued from the rubble, were shifted to Lahore hospitals. Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi said that the government would thoroughly probe the building collapse and take necessary action against those found guilty. He said the heirs of every dead person would be paid rupees one hundred thousand as compensation while every injured person would be given rupees fifty thousand by the government.
