Ten killed in firecracker manufacturing blast: police

A day after a major blaze triggered explosions at afirecracker manufacturing unit on the outskirts of Telangana's Warangal city claiming eight lives, police today said two more persons had died in the incident.

A blaze ripped through the unit yesterday, setting off a series of blasts that left eight people dead and five injured, officials had said.

Due to the impact of the blasts, body parts were strewn across the place, which lay enveloped in soot.

Warangal Police Commissioner V Ravinder today said after an investigationthey came to the conclusion that two more persons, V Mallikarjun and V Rakesh, had also died in the fire accident.

"As per eye-witnesses and statement of the injured, these two persons were inside the unit when the incident occurred," the Commissioner said.

Body parts were collected from the scene by forensic experts and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Hyderabad to conduct DNA tests and to ascertain their identity, he said.

The Police Commissioner said two families had yesterday approached police claiming their kin, who too had gone for work at the unit, were missing.

The bodies of eight persons--four men and four women), most of them workers at the unit, were handed over to their families after post-mortem.

Two of the five injured persons were discharged from hospital today, police said.

The owner of the unit, Rajkumar, was arrested last night and a case under various IPC sections, including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and relevant sections of Explosives Act, registered against him.