2023-04-30 07:52:45
Deadly gas leak in an industrial area in India
An accident in the town of Ludhiana leaves eleven dead and four injured. A rescue operation is underway.
The leak occurred in Giaspura, an industrial area in the city of Ludhiana.
KEYSTONE/National Disaster Response Force via AP)
Eleven people died on Sunday according to local police after a gas leak in an industrial area in the northern state of Punjab in India, a country where this type of accident is frequent.
The leak occurred in Giaspura, an industrial area in the city of Ludhiana.
“Eleven deaths have been confirmed,” Ludhiana police commissioner Mandeep Singh Sidhu told reporters, adding that four people have been hospitalized.
The cause of this leak has not yet been identified.
“When the blood samples are compared to the samples taken by the team (on site, editor’s note), it is only then” that the exact cause of the disaster, as well as the type of gas, can be determined, said the commissioner.
Five women are among the victims, Indian television channel NDTV reported. Two boys, aged 10 and 13, were also among the victims, she added.
terrible scenes
This type of accident is frequent in India – the most populous country in the world – often criticized for its poor industrial safety standards.
In August 2022, at least 112 women were hospitalized following a gas leak at a garment factory in Andhra Pradesh (south).
Two years earlier, in May 2020, a gas leak in a polystyrene factory, LG Polymers – Indian subsidiary of the South Korean company LG Chemicals – took place in this same southern state. Result: at least 15 dead and hundreds of people hospitalized.
This type of accident is frequent in India – the most populous country in the world – often criticized for its poor industrial safety standards. (Illustrative photo)
KEYSTONE/EPA/STR
The leak had left in its wake horrific scenes of people lying unconscious in the streets, rekindling memories of the 1984 Bhopal tragedy.
On the night of December 2 to 3, 1984, 40 tons of gas escaped from a pesticide factory in this city in the center of this country.
Some 3,500 people had died in a few days, mainly in the shantytowns located around these facilities of the American company Union Carbide and 25,000 in the years and decades that followed.
The consequences of this tragedy are endless for the inhabitants of the surroundings of the factory, many of them having given birth to children with deformities.
Their number is impossible to establish but, in the streets close to the abandoned site, many families had, after 1984, children who died prematurely or suffered from serious health problems.
AFP
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