MAGAZINE BLOWN UP

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8143, 10 June 1912, Page 7

MAGAZINE BLOWN UP

THIRTY MEN KILLED FEARFUL TRAGEDY IN AUSTRIAN 1 AMMUNITION FACTORY. HUNDRED OTHER CASUALTIES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received Juno 9, 5.5 p.m.) VIENNA, Juno 8. An explosion of 400,C00 pounds ot powder took placo in tho melinite department of tho Wollersdorf Ammunition Factory- at Wienor-Neustadt, a military centre thirteen miles south of this city. One building was demolished. The noiso of tho explosion was heard forty miles away. Windows were shattered in buildings twenty-five miles distant. Two thousand persons were employed in adjoining buildings. Estimates of the number of deaths vary from ten to thirty, but it is known that at least a hundred persons were injured—most of them being badly cub by fragments of glass and stono which fell alter tho explosion. Two companies of troops were drilling near by, and a captain was thrown off his horso and killed, while the men wore thrown to tho ground and fifteen of them injured. Tho officer in charge of tho magazine was blown to pieces. A number of aeroplanes were wrecked at an adjacent aviation ground.

A mounted soldier was hurled, with his horse, a distance of a hundred yards. In some quarters tho disaster is attributed to decomposition of the powder, while in others it is alleged that a workman dropped a package of tho powder, and the commission as it struck the ground caused it to explode. Others again report that tho explosion was duo to tho ignition of petrol in a motor ammunition waggon.