Explosion in Madrid building injures at least three people

MADRID (Reuters) -An explosion, apparently caused by a gas leak, damaged a building in Madrid’s downtown neighbourhood of Malasana on Friday, injuring at least three people and causing a fire, police in the Spanish capital told Reuters.

Two people were lightly injured and one woman was hospitalised with serious burns, according to Madrid’s emergency service.

“The first indications we have is that it was a gas leak that caused the explosion,” a police spokesperson said.

Many buildings in Madrid’s downtown are old and decrepit, with rundown infrastructure that frequently causes accidents. Earlier this week a water pipe broke, flooding part of the Comillas neighbourhood, and last year a gas explosion destroyed a building in La Latina area, killing four people.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro, Emma Pinedo and Christina Thykjaer, editing by Andrei Khalip and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)