KISLAYPANDEY_BuildingExplosionandCollapseatHarlem,Manhattan-NYCBlockCollapses

Two New York City apartment buildings collapsed on Wednesday in an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak, killing at least four people, injuring more than 30 others and setting off a search for several more victims feared trapped in the rubble, officials said.

The blast, which scattered debris across nearby rooftops, brought down the adjoining five-story buildings, with a total of 15 apartments, at about 9:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) on a largely residential Upper Manhattan block at East 116th Street and Park Avenue.

Clouds of thick smoke billowed from the rubble of the apartment houses that had sat above a ground-level church and a piano store in a largely Latino working-class neighborhood.

Pockets of fire and heat smoldered inside the mounds of debris for many hours after the blasts, complicating search-and-rescue operations that continued under flood lights through the night, city Fire Department spokesman Michael Parrella said.

He said city officials estimated that nine people were still missing as of midnight, though a city police spokesman put the number of apartment residents who remained unaccounted for at about five.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who rushed to the scene in East Harlem, where a cascade of twisted and burnt metal blocked the sidewalk and covered parked cars, said preliminary information showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

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