Two people were killed before dawn Monday in an explosion of a tank of household gas in a Jerusalem apartment building.

The blast occurred at around 4:30 a.m. in a building on Klausner Street in the Arnona-Talpiot neighborhood.

Two additional people were hurt in the blast and the resulting fire, one of them seriously.

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"There was a sharp explosion at around 4:30, I thought that a crane had collapsed, then I saw a large fire burst from one of the apartments," said a neighbor, Benny Lehrer. "A door was ripped off its hinges, the walls were blackened, all the apartments filled with smoke."

The initial investigation into the explosion raised suspicions that one of the building's residents had set fire to himself intentionally. Neighbors had reported that they had seen him shortly before the explosion roaming the nearby streets with his girlfriend.

The police believe that the suicide blaze caused the explosion of the tank, killing the woman who lived on the floor above the first victim. The two injured residents apparently suffered from smoke inhalation in the ensuing fire.