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Explosion hits gas pipeline connecting Lithuania and Latvia – nearby village set to be evacuated

An explosion has hit a gas pipeline connecting Lithuania and Latvia.

The blast happened in the Panevezys county, northern Lithuania, said the country’s gas transmission operator Amber Grid.

Lithuania’s public broadcaster LRT showed footage of a fire in the area.

Police were preparing to evacuate a nearby village, Baltic news agency BNS reported.

There were no injuries or fatalities reported, BNS added.

“We are investigating the cause of the explosion,” the Amber Grid spokesperson said.

Flames rose 50 meters (160ft) in the air and could be seen from a distance of at least 17km (11 miles), LRT reported.

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Head of public administration in the nearby town of Pasvalys, Povilas Balciunas, told Reuters the flames were still
burning at 5.50pm GMT.

Pasvalys has a population of approximately 6,500 individuals

“The firefighters are not fighting the fire at the moment, as currently it’s a big torch of gas, and all effort to put it out would be futile, it would just waste water,” he said.

The gas transmission system in the area consists of two parallel pipelines, and initial data indicates that the explosion occurred in one of them.

The other pipeline remained undamaged.

Consumers in the Pasvalys district are being supplied with gas through the adjacent pipeline.

Sky’s Dominic Waghorn said: “It appears to be some kind of device or a terrible accident that ignited the pipeline and exploded it sufficiently to let enough gas escape to cause this kind of fireball.

“It appears to be a big enough fire to have caused authorities to, as a precaution, evacuate a large area around the site of the explosion.

“The background to this is that we have seen attacks on civilian energy infrastructures both in Ukraine, because of the war there, but also in parts of Russia.”

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