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Rescuers searching for survivors after the explosion in Yerevan. Xinhua News Agency/PA Images

Death toll from Armenian blast rises to five with over 60 injured

The cause has not yet been established, but local news reports, said the explosion went off at a place that stored fireworks.

THE DEATH TOLL from an explosion at a bustling shopping market in the Armenian capital Yerevan rose to five today.

Four women and one man died, over 60 were injured and 19 were missing after yesterday’s blast at the Surmalu wholesale market, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

Search and rescue operations were carried out overnight, it said, with 10 survivors and one body pulled from the rubble.

The explosion caused a fire and led to the collapse of a building.

The cause has not yet been established, but local news reports, citing witnesses, said the explosion went off at a place that stored fireworks.

Photos and videos posted on social media showed a thick column of black smoke over the market and what appeared to be a series of detonations can be heard.

Prosecutors meanwhile launched a probe into violations “on stocking inflammable goods”, breaches in fire safety standards and the death of people “due to negligence”.

In all, 200 firefighters and medical workers were sent to the scene, as well as fire engines and construction site equipment.

Rescue workers used a digger to clear away rubble, an AFP journalist at the scene reported earlier.

The disaster comes as the country of three million people is still recovering from a 2020 war with Azerbaijan, which ended in a heavy defeat and sparked a political crisis.

© – AFP, 2022

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    Mute Chris O Neill Cabra
    Favourite Chris O Neill Cabra
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:12 PM

    ”That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

    Carl Sagan

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 3:28 PM

    Amazing quote.

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    Mute Rehabmeerkat
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    Aug 17th 2015, 6:13 PM

    that’s not a quote it’s a short story

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:45 AM

    Amazing picture.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:00 PM

    it makes us look like a giant marble…

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    Mute Gary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:30 PM

    Luke, you mean like a giant ellipsoid or an oblate spheroid.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:32 PM

    that’s exactly what I mean, Gary.

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    Mute Bobby Neary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:53 AM

    I’d say he wished he brought some LSD….that would be some light show then ..

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    Mute Lindsay Price
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:55 AM

    Yeah cause it’s not like he’s working or anything.

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    Mute Brendan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:50 AM

    Seen these for real and magical is the way I would describe them

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