India building fire kills 17
At least 17 people died when a fire broke out due to a short circuit in a building in the Indian city of Hyderabad on Sunday, officials said.
The fire broke out on the ground floor and spread to the upper floors of the building located in Hyderabad and about a dozen firefighting vehicles were involved in the operation, the Telangana Fire, Disaster Response, Emergency and Civil Defense Department said in a statement.
India's Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy, who visited the site, told local media that a preliminary inquiry indicated a short circuit may have led to the fire.
The 17 dead included six children aged under 5 years.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Arab News
2 days ago
- Arab News
Singapore-flagged ship carrying toxic oil explodes off Indian coast
NEW DELHI: India's Coast Guard and Navy were struggling on Tuesday to extinguish a fire on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship that exploded in the Arabian Sea, triggering an alarm over its load of 100 tonnes of bunker oil. The MV Wan Hai 503, en route to Mumbai from Sri Lanka, reported an internal container explosion on Monday, which triggered a major fire on board as the vessel approached the coast of the southern state of Kerala. The Indian Coast Guard said the situation was 'critical' as its ships engaged in an overnight operation to douse the flames and rescue 22 members of the vessel's crew. Four crew remain missing. Two of them are from Thailand, one from Indonesia and one from Myanmar, according to Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority, which sent a team to assist the Indian rescuers. Containers falling from the ship were reported drifting between Kerala's Kozhikode and Kochi, triggering an alert by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services over a potential spill of what it identified as 100 tonnes of bunker oil. Bunker oil is a thick, heavy and viscous fuel used to power large ships, especially cargo vessels and tankers. It is one of the dirtiest and most polluting fuels. It contains sulfur, heavy metals and carcinogens. If spilled, it is difficult to clean up and may persist for months or years in the marine environment, suffocating coral reefs and killing fish and seabirds. 'Caution is advised about a few containers beaching between Kozhikode and Kochi,' the INCOIS said in a notification, adding that there was an 'estimated 70-80 percent probability' that the containers that went overboard from the MV Wan Hai 503 might drift south-southeastwards from the accident location for the next three days. The incident took place just two weeks after a Liberian-flagged vessel carrying hazardous cargo sank off Kerala's coast. The vessel went down with cargo containing calcium carbide and more than 84 metric tonnes of diesel, and 367 metric tonnes of furnace oil. Diesel and furnace oil are both classified as marine pollutants that are toxic to marine life and can contaminate coastal ecosystems.


Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- Al Arabiya
Indian navy deploys after crew injured on burning container ship
India deployed coast guard aircraft and a warship on Monday after a Singapore-flagged container ship caught fire off the southern coast, the defense ministry said, with four crew members missing. Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) said in a statement that there were 'some injuries' among the crew, with four members unaccounted for. Photographs taken by a coast guard plane showed a thick plume of billowing black smoke and containers that had seemingly been hurled up by a powerful explosion on board. 'Fire incident reported onboard Singapore-flagged container vessel MV Wan Hai 503,' India's defense ministry said in a statement, adding that it had diverted a destroyer to aid the stricken ship. It said the 268-meter (879-foot) vessel caught fire some 78 nautical miles off Beypore port. Singapore's MPA said that, of the total crew of 22, 18 had been 'accounted for and are in the process of being transferred from lifeboats to a passing vessel,' adding that 'some injuries have been reported among them.' It said four crew members remain unaccounted for. 'The Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy are rendering assistance to the crew and conducting search and rescue operations for the missing crew,' the MPA said. A Liberian-flagged container ship with hazardous cargo sank off the coast of Kerala in southern India last month. The Indian navy rescued all 24 crew members.


Arab News
3 days ago
- Arab News
At least five injured as fire engulfs multiple factories in Pakistan's Karachi
KARACHI: At least five persons were injured after a fire engulfed multiple factories in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, Rescue 1122 officials said on Sunday, with efforts underway to douse the blaze. The fire affected four factories, including YG Textile and MF Roomi Textile, at the Landhi Export Processing Zone, with 11 fire brigade trucks and one snorkel taking part in the firefighting operation. The operation was facing difficulties due to the intensity of smoke and shortage of water in the city of roughly 20 million people, according to rescue officials. 'Five people were injured after part of an affected building collapsed,' Rescue 1122 spokesperson Hasaan Khan told Arab News. 'The injured were shifted to the hospital.' The Rescue 1122 team is making efforts to control the blaze by utilizing all possible resources, Khan added. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and commercial capital, is home to hundreds of thousands of industrial units and some of the tallest buildings in the South Asian country. The megapolis, known for its fragile firefighting system and poor safety controls, witnesses hundreds of fire incidents annually. In Nov. last year, a blaze at a shopping mall killed around a dozen people and injured several others. In April 2023, four firefighters died and nearly a dozen others were injured after a blaze erupted at a garment factory, while 10 people were killed in a massive fire at a chemical factory in the city in August 2021. In the deadliest such incident, 260 people were killed in 2012 after being trapped inside a garment factory when a fire broke out.