Hanoi explosion sends 4 people to hospital

At around 10 a.m., an explosion occurred, rumbling the ground, shaking the walls and shattering the windows of a 5-story house that was also a restaurant, on Yen Phu Street, causing it to collapse.

There were no customers at the restaurant at the time, only two employees.

Shattered walls fall over objects inside the restaurant. However, the beams that support the house remain intact.

The force of the blast destroyed the windows on the second floor.

Objects, glass and other debris were blasted hundreds of meters away.

Shards of glass were blasted around 50 m from the original location.

Pieces of wood and other objects in the restaurant were gathered in one place by public workers.

Workers clean up scattered objects on the street.

People remove a motorbike from the site of the explosion.

Firefighters use ladder trucks to gain access to higher floors of the building.

Five people were taken to the St. Paul Hospital, a representative of Ba Dinh District said. The explosion might have been caused by a gas leak, they added.

The scene of the incident has been barricaded for an investigation.

Hundreds of curious passersby gather on Yen Phu Street to see what was going on, jamming the road.