The site where two New York City apartment buildings
collapsed after an explosion caused by a gas leak
A rescue operation is continuing in
New York after a gas leak triggered an explosion that demolished two buildings
and killed at least seven people.
Firefighters are trying to find further victims trapped beneath the rubble of the apartment blocks in Harlem, with the death toll expected to rise.
A police spokesman said five people remained unaccounted for.
More than 60 people were injured after the devastating blast sent debris flying through the air on Wednesday.
Residents were said to have complained recently about "unbearable" gas smells.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who rushed to the scene in Upper Manhattan, said preliminary information showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak.
A fire at the site of the blast on Park Avenue and 116th Street hampered the initial search and a sinkhole created by a broken water main caused further difficulties.
But firefighters worked through the night, as temperatures dropped to near freezing, to sift through the rubble, using a bulldozer to help clear the site.
Rescue workers pulled three bodies out of the debris in the early hours of Thursday morning, and a seventh death was confirmed just before 12:00GMT (08:00 local time).
"This is a difficult job, a challenging job," Fire Department spokesman Jim Long said. He added that it was "a very terrible and traumatic scene".
Firefighters sift through the rubble of the building
searching for survivors 
Dozens of first responders were on hand to evacuate
victims The blast shattered windows a block away and rained debris onto nearby railway lines, which closed Grand Central station for several hours on Wednesday.
"It felt like an earthquake had rattled my whole building," said Waldemar Infante, a porter who was working nearby. "There were glass shards everywhere on the ground, and all the stores had their windows blown out."
A witness told the BBC "there was just a lot of panic" following the explosion.
Another witness told the New York Daily News that he heard two loud explosions that shook the barber shop where he works.
"It was loud, like boom, boom!" Mitch Abreu said. "It rocked the whole block."
Continue reading the main story
A dense plume of smoke in the skies of Manhattan is a sight for New Yorkers
that stirs bad memories and spreads fear - especially early in the morning. But
despite the early presence of the FBI as a precautionary measure it soon became
clear this was a gas explosion rather than foul play.
The intensity of the blaze, which took hours to extinguish, made it all the more difficult for emergency crews. They could not carry out a search of the rubble. The choking smoke added to the immediate chaos at the scene, as local people rushed to find loved ones.
The hope is that those still missing are alive and simply can't be contacted. The fear is that some were unable to escape.
At the scene
The intensity of the blaze, which took hours to extinguish, made it all the more difficult for emergency crews. They could not carry out a search of the rubble. The choking smoke added to the immediate chaos at the scene, as local people rushed to find loved ones.
The hope is that those still missing are alive and simply can't be contacted. The fear is that some were unable to escape.
"It looked like the [Twin] Towers all over again. People
covered in dust and covering their mouths."
A local college identified one victim as Griselde Camacho, a 45-year-old security officer who had worked at the school since 2008.
Two other victims were named as Carmen Tanco, 67, a dental hygienist and 21-year-old Rosaura Hernandez-Barrios.
The bodies found by rescue workers overnight have not yet been identified.
At least three of the injured were children and a 15-year-old boy was reported to be in a critical condition. Authorities said that most of the other injuries were minor and included cuts and scrapes.
Meanwhile, city officials and utility company Con Edison are facing questions about whether complaints about a smell of gas in the area had been ignored before the fatal leak.
Con Edison said a resident in a nearby building reported smelling gas shortly before the incident, but a team of engineers did not arrive until it was too late.
A tenant in one of the destroyed buildings, Ruben Borrero, said residents had complained to the landlord about smelling gas as recently as Tuesday.
He said that city fire officials were called about the odour a few weeks ago and that the smell had been "unbearable". He added: "You walk in the front door and you want to turn around and walk directly out."
But the New York fire department said its records showed no instances in the past month in which tenants of the two buildings had reported any leaks or the smell of gas.
Edward Foppiano, a senior vice president at Con Edison, said a gas odour complaint had been lodged with the company in May 2013 but that the small leak it related to had been found and fixed.
He said the gas main that serves the area was made of plastic and cast iron, and the iron dated to 1887.
Before and after at the collapsed buildings
Nearly 200 firefighters were dispatched to try to
extinguish the fire the followed the blast 
Firefighters begin searching through the rubble of
the two buildings
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