At least 27 people were killed yesterday and a dozen missing following a fierce blaze in a South Korean refrigerated warehouse, firefighters said.
"So far we have recovered 27 bodies. The death toll is expected to rise as a dozen workers are feared dead in the basement," Woo Sung-shik, a fire department official here, told reporters.
About 200 firefighters were sent into the basement of the two-story building in Icheon after the fire was put out, he said.
"The rescue work has been hampered by toxic fumes but we are trying hard to recover the remaining bodies," Woo said.
The fire apparently started in the warehouse basement, where workers were using flammable materials, other officials said.
Witnesses that there were explosions from the basement of the cold storage facility, which had been under construction when the fire broke out.
At the time of the blaze, 57 people were working in the warehouse, Yonhap news agency said.
Firefighters said 21 workers managed to escape the fire, with 10 sent to hospital for burns or for fume inhalation.
The exact cause of the fire was not known, but investigators believe that inflammable vapor from the basement's engine room might have caught fire, setting off consecutive explosions, Yonhap said.
"There were loud bangs, flames shot up and one seriously burned woman ran into my restaurant crying for help," Lee Yong-seon, 43, who runs a restaurant near the warehouse, was quoted as saying.
Korea 2000, owner of the warehouse, told Yonhap that workers had been welding in the building, which contained spare polyurethane material used for flooring.
"We suspect flammable gas, probably caused by work with thinners and polyurethanes, exploded with a spark," an unnamed firefighter told cable news network YTN.
More than 100 fire engines and 440 firefighters, backed by hundreds of police, tackled the blaze.
Authorities evacuated hundreds of residents from the nearby town.
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