A massive blaze raged for hours at a fireworks factory in southern India, killing at least 40 workers and injuring 60 Wednesday, police said.
Large amounts of firecrackers and raw materials had been stored in the Om Siva Shakti factory with major Hindu festivals weeks away.
Police officer Najmul Huda said rescue workers and firefighters initially could not get into the building as the fire raged, triggering deafening explosions of firecrackers.
Workers fled the area, but many were killed as they waited at a nearby warehouse which also caught fire and exploded, Huda told reporters.
Police in southern India arrested 11 employees of a fireworks factory on Thursday, a day after a massive blaze at the facility killed 40 workers and injured 60 others.
The arrests came as grieving relatives cremated the charred bodies of their loved ones, who died Wednesday when the fire blew up large amounts of firecrackers and raw materials stored at the factory.
On Thursday, police arrested 11 employees of the Om Siva Shakti factory on charges of culpable homicide and storing explosives illegally, said police officer Najmal Hoda.
Soundarajan, who uses one name, said his 19-year-old son who died in the blaze was a part-time worker at the factory, which needed extra workers to meet the demand for firecrackers ahead of the coming Hindu festival season.
"My son left in the morning, and a few hours later we heard the loud sound of the blast, which even shook our house nearby," Soundarajan said. "Only later I came to know that my son had lost his life."
Senior police officer Najmul Hoda listed a string of violations in the plant, adding that its production licence had been revoked but operations had continued regardless.
''Not more than 160 people are allowed to work, but there were around 400 persons inside the premises,'' he told reporters at the scene.
The fire safety system had not functioned when an initial fire broke out - reportedly because of a mistake in mixing chemicals - and the premises had been sub-let to a third party, which is illegal.
''The original owner cannot leave the factory to someone else,'' Hoda said, adding that police were trying to track down the owner for questioning.
Flames billowing out of the factory could be seen one mile away before firefighters extinguished the fire more than five hours after it began. Photographs taken afterwards showed the factory had burned to rubble, with fireworks littering the ground.
The fire spread to 40 of the 60 rooms at the Om Siva Shakti fireworks factory, one of the biggest in Sivakasi, in Tamil Nadu state, a police officer said.
The Press Trust of India news agency said about 300 people were working in the factory and 52 died. The CNN-IBN television news channel said rescue workers had completed a search of the devastated building for trapped workers.
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