Blaze in India drugs factory kills six, leaves 13 others with burns

Fire raged through a pharmaceutical factory after an explosion in southern India, killing at least six workers on night shift and burning 13 others, police said on Thursday.

The fire broke out due to a chemical reactor leaking monomethyl nitric acid -used for manufacturing several types of polymers- which caused an explosion on Wednesday night, Police Officer Rahul Dev Sharma said.

Five workers died on the spot and another succumbed to burns in a hospital. The 13 hospitalised workers were in critical condition as they suffered 80 percent burns, Sharma said.

The cause of the leak is being investigated, he said.

The factory is located in Akkireddygudem, a village in Andhra Pradesh state. Media reports said it took two hours to extinguish the blaze.

Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents. Some don’t even install firefighting equipment.

In 2019, a fire caused by an electrical short circuit in a New Delhi factory producing handbags and other items killed 43 people. In a second major fire that year, a blaze in a six-story building’s illegal rooftop kitchen killed 17 people, also in New Delhi.