Society

One dead and several injured in Netherlands explosion

At least one woman has died and several more people were injured when explosion caused an apartment to collapse in the Netherlands.

Emergency services were called to a residential area in the city of the Hague around 06:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Salvage effort are continuing but the cause of the blast, which provoked the partial collapse of the three-storey building, is not known at this stage.

Dutch police said they are looking for a car that was seen leaving the scene this morning.

The Hague's mayor told a press conference that the authorities don't know how many more people are missing under the rubble.

Jan van Zanen said that rescuers were no longer looking for survivors but for evential bodies.

"The chance that living people will be found is very small," he said, quoted by Reuters.

Residents of the neighborhood told reporters from the AP press agency that "they heard a huge bang and screams before dawn".

The Netherlands' prime minister, Dick Schoof, said in a statement that he was "shocked" by the news and had offered assistance to local authorities.
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