At least eight people were injured on Friday after a gas explosion hit a Chinese restaurant in St. Petersburg.

According to initial information, the gas blast caused fire at the restaurant located on the ground floor of a five-story apartment building, said the Interfax citing local emergency service.

The fire had been extinguished and the injured people had been hospitalized, said the report.

The Chinese Consulate here told Xinhua that all the injured are Chinese citizens and one of them was in serious condition.

Local emergency service said some 20 people were evacuated from the building, and five water cannons were involved in the fire-fighting efforts.

This was one of the several gas blast accidents that happened in Russia recently. On Feb. 19, a similar incident killed nine people in a Moscow restaurant. On Feb. 27, a nine-story building collapsed following a gas explosion in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan, killing 10 and injuring 15 others.

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