HERAT (TIP): At least 11 people, most of them children, were killed in a series of explosions at an Afghan gas storage facility, which triggered a massive inferno in a nearby settlement for displaced people, officials said today.

It was not immediately clear whether the blasts late yesterday on the edge of the relatively peaceful western city of Herat were the result of an accident or caused by a militant attack.

“Around midnight (Monday) a gas tanker exploded which triggered blasts in a gas storage plant, killing 11 people and injuring 10 others,” Herat police spokesman Abdul Rauf Ahmadi told AFP.

The explosions triggered a plume of flames into the night sky, which rapidly spread to a nearby settlement of mud houses for internally displaced people where most of the deaths occurred.

Ihasanullah Hayat, spokesman for the governor of Herat, confirmed the toll and said the majority of those killed were children.