Islamabad, Nov 22, (dpa/GNA) – A pre-dawn explosion ripped through a glue-making factory in eastern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 18 people and wounding nearly two dozen, officials said.
The blast, which originated from a boiler, flattened the factory and around a dozen houses in the industrial city of Faisalabad, rescue official Farooq Ahmed told dpa.
A search-and-rescue operation lasting several hours retrieved 18 bodies and 23 injured people from the rubble, local administrator Raja Jahangir said.
Several of the injured were in a critical condition, Ahmed said.
A gas leak might have triggered the explosion, said Jahangir, citing preliminary findings.
The explosion comes almost a week after a similar accident at a firecracker factory in the southern province of Sindh killed 10 people.
GNA