A huge explosion and fire ripped through a Tokyo night-club building Saturday, killing 44 late-night revelers in Japan's worst fire disaster in nearly 30 years.
The blast gutted a mahjong game parlor and a girlie bar around 1:00 am (1600 GMT Friday) in the heart of the well-known red light area of Kabukicho in Shinjuku, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
About 50 officers from the metropolitan police and fire departments spent eight hours combing through the four-storey building, which had only one inside stairway and a small lift, looking for clues as to what might have caused the tragedy.
Arson has not been ruled out.
"We are cautiously probing the incident from a broad standpoint and arson is one possibility," a press officer for the police department said.
The Kyodo news agency reported that an anonymous man telephoned one of its bureaus and repeatedly asked in broken Japanese if the Japanese people had learnt a "lesson" from the fire.
The fire department however said it suspected a gas leak from a broken pipe had caused the blast.
"Areas near a gas meter on the third floor of the building were burnt seriously," a spokesman for the department told AFP. "And we found that a gas pipe connected with the meter was cut off."
Of the victims -- 32 men and 12 women -- only 21 had been identified by Saturday evening. They ranged from 18 to 46 and died mostly from carbon monoxide poisoning, police said.
The Kabukicho area is cramped with about 5,000 bars, nightclubs and sex parlours in a square about 600 metres (yards) by 600 metres.
Rescue workers said the owner of the building had allegedly broken fire safety regulations, which was a suspected factor in the high death toll.
Shinichi Seki, a fire department official, said the building was not fitted with emergency evacuation equipment such as ladders or a chute.
"We also found that the owner failed to submit fire prevention reports to us, which is a requirement for building owners," he said.
Police said they had not received any reports of foreign casualties. Shinjuku has one of Tokyo's largest concentrations of foreign workers and visitors, many of them from China, South Korea, the Philippines and other Asian countries.
The game parlour was equipped with about 20 video tables providing simulated plays of mahjong, a traditional Chinese board game.
It was Japan's worst fire disaster in nearly 30 years and the biggest in the capital since World War II. A total of 118 people died at the Sennichi department store in the western Japan city of Osaka in 1972, in the worst post-war fire.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and ordered an immediate probe into the cause of the blast.
"I want the ministries and agencies concerned to carry out a thorough investigation," Koizumi told a news conference as he prepared to inspect nationwide anti-disater drills marking the anniversary of a 1923 earthquake that killed about 140,000 in and around Tokyo.
The three injured survivors were in a stable condition and their lives were not in danger after they sustained injuries falling or jumping to escape the blaze, police said.
The blast destroyed part of the front walls of the building, exposing scorched steal girders on the third floor while also blowing away billboards on the building.
"I heard a sound like someone pounding on a wall," said Toshiki Iwasawa, a 28-year-old pub employee.
"When I looked back, there already was a mass of smoke. I saw a man falling from the building."
About 100 fire engines were employed to battle the fire for about five hours before it was put out.
The explosion was noticed by an employee at the mahjong parlour when he opened a door, police said.
"The employee saw black smoke coming from the elevator hall when he opened the door," a police officer said. "He said he jumped off from the third floor as he thought there was something wrong."
Some survivors were rescued unhurt from the roof of the building by firemen with ladders -- TOKYO (AFP)
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