Twenty bodies found after fire in battery factory

Around twenty people died in South Korea after a fire at a lithium battery factory that firefighters managed to extinguish, local media reported on Monday.

The fire occurred in Hwaseong, south of Seoul, at a factory belonging to South Korean battery manufacturer Aricell.

“More than 100 people were working at the factory when workers heard a series of explosions on the second floor, where lithium batteries are inspected and packaged,” a member of the fire department on site said.

The latter told the press that the firefighters had managed to extinguish the blaze and that they were now working on removing the bodies from the building charred by the flames. “A rescue team has entered inside and is carrying out search and rescue operations,” he said.

Highly flammable, around 35,000 lithium batteries were on the second floor of the factory where the fire broke out. “It was difficult to enter the building because we feared more explosions would occur,” Kim Jin-young said, adding that firefighters managed to put out the flames using “dry sand.”