An explosion at an Indian power plant Wednesday killed at least 16 workers and seriously burned dozens of others, police said. The blast occurred at a coal-fired power plant in Raebareli district of northern Uttar Pradesh state, run by the government-owned National Thermal Power Corporation.
Images showed thick grey plumes of smoke rising into the sky before ambulances rushed to the scene. "Raebareli NTPC death toll increases to 16," the official Uttar Pradesh police Twitter account tweeted late Wednesday. The state's principal secretary, Arvind Kumar, said up to 100 were injured in the explosion, according to the Press Trust of India.
Anand Kumar, a director-general of police in the state capital Lucknow, said preliminary findings suggested that ash had collected in the furnace below the boiler, causing the explosion.