At least 104 people have been killed and dozens of others wounded after a gas cylinder exploded in a restaurant in central India, police officials say.

The blast happened at around 8:30 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Saturday at a restaurant in Jhabua district of the central Madhya Pradesh State as dozens of office workers and schoolchildren were having breakfast, senior district police official Seema Alava told reporters.

“The restaurant was in a tightly packed locality and a lot of people were here having breakfast, that is why the casualties are so high,” Alava said.

"There are 104 confirmed deaths at the moment. Eighty-two postmortems have been carried out and 22 are still pending," M. L. Gond, an inspector in charge of Jhabua's police control room said.

"My information is that 60 people are injured, but the number could be higher," he added.

The intensity of the blast knocked down a neighboring building and damaged several others. However, the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear, with police still investigating the incident.

State TV footage showed scores of rescuers and people using their bare hands to shift mangled heaps of steel and concrete of the crumbled buildings to help those stuck there find their way out.

Safety standards are relatively poor and domestic gas cylinder explosions are common in India.