Blast in Telangana firecracker factory kills eight; five injured

Warangal: A blaze ripped through a firecracker manufacturing unit on the outskirts of Telangana's Warangal city on Wednesday, setting off a series of blasts that left eight people dead and five injured, officials said.

The cause of the fire that quickly spread to large parts of the factory at Kotilingala village of Warangal, about 150 km north-east of state capital Hyderabad, was not yet known.

"There were two huge blasts followed by smaller ones," Warangal District Fire Officer M Bhagwan Reddy said. He said the exact cause of the blaze and the blasts were being ascertained.

Earlier reports suggested that the blaze could have been caused by an electrical short-circuit. Three of those killed were charred beyond recognition, an official said.

Body parts were strewn across the place, which lay enveloped in soot and stench of burnt flesh.

Many of the deceased were suspected to be women as most workers at the factory were women from nearby localities, District Collector M Haritha said.

Telangana Deputy Chief Minister K Srihari, who rushed to the scene of the tragedy, told reporters that eight people were killed in the incident, while the five wounded were shifted to a government hospital in Warangal. An earlier report quoting Haritha, the Warangal (Rural) District Collector, had said ten workers were killed and two injured in the incident.

She later clarified the confusion about the death toll was due to the bodies having got dismembered under the impact of the explosions.

"Three persons out of the ten were charred beyond recognition. The bodies have been shifted to a mortuary for post-mortem and to identify the deceased," she said.

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has expressed shock over the loss of lives and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the families of each of those killed, Srihari said.