At least 100 people were killed on Monday when a fire swept through large tents packed with shoppers at a trade fair in north India, police said.
”At least 100 people are dead,” Rajiv Sabarwal, police chief of Meerut, 80km north of New Delhi, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Witnesses said bodies were charred beyond recognition and had been scattered throughout the stalls of the sprawling exhibition ground.
Badly burnt bodies of men, women and children had been dumped in the back of trucks, police inspector Rakesh Tomar told AFP, predicting the death toll could rise much higher.
Television footage showed blackened steel frames, which were all that remained of the air-conditioned tents that had been erected at the fair. Plumes of thick black smoke billowed into the air as rescue workers ferried casualties to Meerut district hospital.
”We have so far removed 45 bodies to the mortuary,” district police chief Raj Kumar Vishwakarma told Star news television by telephone.
The early evening blaze destroyed three giant exhibition tents at the Brand India Fair at the city’s Victoria Park where companies displayed products for throngs of shoppers.
”The fire has been brought under control,” Yaqoob Qureshi, state minister for minority welfare, told NDTV.
”The tents had a capacity for 2000 to 2 500 people. It is difficult to say how many people were there,” Qureshi added.
Confusion reigned as large crowds milled around the devastation in Meerut, which has a population of more than one million and is well-known as the site of the outbreak of the 1857 mutiny against British rule.
Authorities were still to find out how the fire broke out at the five-day fair, which was set to close on Monday. First reports spoke of an electrical short circuit.
Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav announced a payment of $4 500 dollars to the relatives to each victim.
The fire was the worst such accident since 90 school children were killed in a fire that whipped through classrooms in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in July 2004.
In a similar tragedy, more than 250 Hindu devotees, mainly women and children, were crushed to death during a stampede after fire broke out and gas canisters exploded at a religious festival in western India in January 2005.
Large crowds pose regular safety threats at events throughout India where at times millions of people mass under hazardous safety conditions. — AFP
