NEW DELHI, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least six people have been killed in a major fire that broke out at an air-cooler manufacturing unit in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad early Wednesday morning, a senior police official said.
"The fire broke out around 5 a.m. local time (1130 GMT Tuesday) when the victims, all workers, were sleeping under the shed of an air-cooler inside the manufacturing unit at Attapur. Before they could realize what had happened, the victims were all charred to death in the blaze," he said.
All the victims were from the neighboring eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Local TV channels reported that some six fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flams that had engulfed the plant within minutes and it took them more than three hours to control the fire.
Preliminary probe has suggested that the fire broke out due to short-circuit in the air-cooler and that the workers had bolted the room from inside which had hampered their exit at the time of the incident, the official said.
The owner of the air-cooler manufacturing unit has been arrested and a probe ordered into the incident, he added.
