Five-year-old girl's arm is blown off when her father uses an angle grinder to cut open a gasoline barrel in their garden and the sparks set off an explosion

• The girl's father and another man were cutting a fuel barrel in Hamelin, Germany 
• Sparks from the angle grinder caught on to the remaining fuel in the barrel 
• Explosion formed inside of the can and the lid launched off towards the girl
• She lost her arm, police said, and her mother is also listed as critical in hospital

A five-year-old girl's arm was blown off in Germany over the weekend when her father used an angle grinder to cut open a gasoline barrel and the sparks set off an explosion. 

The girl's 39-year-old mother was also seriously injured in the blast which took place in an allotment garden in Hamelin, Lower Saxony on Saturday. 

Her father and another man were using an angle grinder early in the evening to cut open a petrol barrel, police said. 

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An oil barrel explosion in a community allotment garden in Hamelin, Germany on Saturday seriously injured a mother and her five-year-old daughter. The youngster's arm was taken off in the blast 

Police said the men failed to check if there was still fuel inside 

The men sliced through the metal, causing sparks from the grinder to ignite the remaining petrol. 

The gases exploded, launching the barrel's lid at the youngster and taking off her arm, NDR 1 Lower Saxony reported.   

Two air ambulances attended and took the girl and her mother to hospital, where both are listed in critical condition. 

The two men escaped with minor injuries.  A regular ambulance took one of them to hospital with blast trauma. 

According to German broadcaster Radio-Aktiv, two rescue helicopters, several ambulances and a large number of rescue workers were initially deployed due to early confusion over the incident.