India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh wrapped up rescue efforts on Thursday at a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant where an explosion the previous day killed 17 people and injured nearly 40, a senior state official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The state’s worst such incident in recent years, Wednesday\u2019s blast took place at the 40-acre (16-hectare) unit of privately held Escientia Advanced Sciences in the Anakapalli district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly 40 people were injured and rescue operations had been completed, the official, Industries Secretary N. Yuvaraj, told Reuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Escientia did not immediately respond to a request for comment but government officials said they suspected an explosion in the chemical reactor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials said they were scanning closed-circuit television footage and questioning the injured to decide if human error was responsible for the blast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Preliminary investigation shows \u2026 there was some vapour leak that led to chemical reactions, which caused the explosion,” added Yuvaraj, who identified the solvent involved as methyl tert-butyl ether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a post on X, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to the relatives of the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh wrapped up rescue efforts on Thursday at a pharmaceutical<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[216,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n