India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel carry the boby of a victim at the site of a building collapse triggered by a cylinder blast during a wedding function at Beawar town of Ajmer district, Rajasthan state, India, Feb. 18, 2018. Rescuers in India's western state of Rajasthan Sunday continued their search in the debris of a collapsed building and retrieved nine more bodies, taking death toll to 18, officials said. (Xinhua)
NEW DELHI, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers in India's western state of Rajasthan Sunday continued their search in the debris of a collapsed building and retrieved nine more bodies, taking death toll to 18, officials said.
The building collapse was triggered after two cooking-gas cylinder exploded Friday night during a marriage function at Beawar town of Ajmer district, about 185 km west of Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan.
"Today nine more bodies have been recovered and death toll has thus gone up to 18," a senior police official said.
According to police, the blasts occurred as a result of leakage in one of the cooking gas cylinder used during the marriage function to prepare food. The blasts brought down the building and also damaged adjacent houses.
Officials rushed in teams of disaster response personnel and army to carry out rescue work. The rescuers were sifting through mangled heaps of concrete and steel to search for bodies.
The state's Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has announced a compensation of 3,112 U.S. dollars to each family that has lost a member in the blast.
