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Blast kills five a Finnish shopping center...
An explosion at a shopping center on the outskirts of Helsinki killed five people and injured about 50 late Friday. They said it was too early to determine the cause of the powerful blast, which occurred at peak shopping hours on the first floor of the mall. "At this moment we still do not rule out any options, but there have not been any typical indications of a terror attack like a phone call," Vantaa Police Chief Seppo Kujala told reporters at the mall. He said there were no suspects. "Paavo, round up the usual suspects." "Chief, this is Finland. There ain't any usual suspects." Several media reports said the explosion at around 7:30 p.m. (1630 GMT) could have been caused by a faulty gas canister, something a Myyrmanni mall official denied. "On the site of the explosion we found five dead bodies, 30 injured were taken to hospitals of whom 10 were in serious condition and 20 people turned up themselves to local hospitals for treatment," Leif Johansson, deputy chief fire officer at the Vantaa Fire and Rescue department, told reporters. Six of the injured were children. The explosion damaged an area of around 3,000 square feet and sent metal debris and glass across the first floor of the three-story mall, where thousands of people were shopping. 3000 square feet is a lot of damage. It's not that nothing terrible ever happens in Finland — but not much does. I can understand that they're disbelieving... Police, fire brigade and more than a dozen ambulances were rushed to the scene and television footage showed injured people being treated by ambulance services and blood on the mall's staircases. Police bomb squads with sniffer dogs were studying the area. ... but they're not stoopid either. The faulty gas cannister sounds like a pretty weak story on its face... The Myyrmanni mall in Vantaa, a suburb some 15 km (10 miles) north of the capital, is Finland's second largest, with 138 shops and restaurants. "There was no gas equipment whatsoever that could explode at this time in the shopping mall," Myyrmanni technical manager Jyrki Karjalainen told reporters. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-10-11 |
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