Sweden: firefighters battle flames of blast, 10 injured

Baku. 7 January. REPORT.AZ/ Firefighters have said Sweden's cold snap is hampering efforts to put out a blaze threatening to destroy family homes on Thursday morning, with the water freezing in the pumps.

Report informs referring to the foreign media, crews were called to the inferno in a three-storey building, home to several families in Borås, central Sweden, at 4.15 a.m. Three hours later the battle was still ongoing.

“We don't have the fire under control. But our focus is to limit it so it doesn't spread in the building,” Lennart Larsson of the fire and rescue services told the newswire at 6.30 a.m.

No one was injured in the blaze and the building was quickly evacuated. However, temperatures dipped to below -10C in Borås on Thursday morning, which has sparked unexpected difficulties for crews.

“The water in our tank has frozen. So we've had to replace it and bring in a new fire engine,” said Larsson.

Meanwhile, two people were in police custody on Thursday after a separate blaze broke out in a multi-storey building in the Stockholm suburb of Vällingby in the early hours of the morning.

“We received several alerts about a powerful explosion just before 2 a.m. The explosion probably came from a tobacco store on the ground floor of the building and the fire then spread,” police control room officer Nicklas Mattsson said