LOS ANGELES, July 18 (Xinhua) — At least three deputies were killed Friday morning in an explosion at a police training facility in Southern California, according to authorities and local media.

The explosion was reported just before 7:30 a.m. local time (1430 GMT) at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Biscailuz Center Academy Training, which houses the sheriff’s department’s special enforcement units and bomb squad, local KABC-TV of the ABC network reported.

The victims were handling some kind of explosives when the blast occurred, said the report, citing preliminary information from sources.

In a statement on X, the press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom said that he “has been briefed on the reported explosion at the LA County Sheriff’s Special Operations Bureau in East Los Angeles.”

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is in contact with the sheriff’s department and monitoring the situation, and has offered full state assistance, the statement added.