Indian wedding blast; death toll rises to 18

A wedding is the most joyous occasion in a family’s life.

But this wedding was more of a nightmare than a joyous occasion.

The death toll from an explosion at a wedding celebration in India rose to 18 on Sunday as rescuers found nine more bodies beneath the ruins of a hotel.

A gas cylinder exploded at the hotel in the city of Beawar, in the western state of Rajasthan, on Friday night, reducing the venue to ruins and sparking a huge fire.

By Saturday evening officials said nine bodies had been found.

But the death toll doubled on Sunday as rescue teams, aided by the army, found nine more victims including women and children under rubble.

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“So far 18 bodies have been recovered,” said Gaurav Goyal, a senior administrative official in Ajmer, the district where the blast occurred, about 200 kilometers from the state capital Jaipur.

“Five seriously injured people, with severe burn injuries, are being treated in hospital,” he said.

Recovery teams were sifting through mangled heaps of concrete and steel, removing victims on stretchers covered with white sheets.

The blast all but leveled the three-story hotel where a wedding was underway. Eyewitnesses told a local broadcaster the explosion occurred as a chef tried to refill a cooking canister.

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Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje visited survivors in hospital on Saturday and announced compensation of Rs. 200,000 each for the families of the dead.

“The cylinder blast at the wedding ceremony at Beawar is nothing less than a nightmare,” she said on Twitter.

Cooking gas cylinder explosions are common in India, where safety standards are relatively poor. Reports of fatal accidents from cylinder blasts are frequent but mass casualties are unusual.