A suspected gas explosion flattened a building and shops in a marketplace in southwest Iran on Sunday, killing at least five people, a fire official said, in the latest in a series of fires and blasts, some of which have hit sensitive sites.
State television showed rescue teams looking for survivors in the rubble of the two-story residential building located near a historic marketplace in the old district of the city of Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.
"The gas explosion led to the complete destruction of a two-story residential building... and four nearby residential buildings and six shops," Ebrahim Qanbari, head of the fire department in Ahvaz, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.