RAWALPINDI, Dec 27: Six people were killed, three of them charred beyond recognition, and ten others injured when a truck carrying firecrackers exploded on the premises of a flour mill in Ganjmandi on Saturday, police and survivors said.

A witness said a truck (LSA-4199) laden with wheat bags, firecrackers and other goods was being unloaded in the godown situated on the premises of Al-Qamar flour mills when it burst into flames at around 9.35 am. The leaping flames trapped more than 30 labourers.

Another witness said an electric pole situated outside the godown also fell on the truck with a big bang causing suspension of power supply.

Two trucks and a car parked inside the flour mill were badly damaged, while the shattered pieces of window panes and twisted metal sheets of the truck littered the area. The sound of the blast was heard from miles.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed visited the site and ruled out that it was a terrorist act. “It has no link with suicide attack on President Musharraf’s convoy. It is an accident and nothing more than that,” the minister told Dawn.

When the information minister was asked about the possible negligence of district administration in this regard, he said: “How can I go against my own administration.”

“As I heard a huge explosion, I turned back and saw a big ball of fire and thick clouds of smoke emitting from the godown,” Tanveer Ahmed one of the survivors told Dawn on hospital bed.

Police and rescue workers arrived at the scene and shifted the dead and the injured to the hospital. “Three of the dead were charred beyond recognition,” the hospital authorities said.

Outside the DHQ hospital, relatives and friends were poring over lists of the casualties pasted on the wall. People unable to find their relatives were told to look them in the mortuary.

District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani said investigation into the incident had been ordered and the injured were being treated at the DHQ Hospital.

The local administration and hospital authorities confirmed six fatalities. Doctors were treating ten injured. Police said two of the dead were identified as Abdul Ghafar, Bashir Ahmed, while the third one was yet to be identified.

However, three others are beyond recognition. It was not known whether the truck driver was among the dead.

The injured being treated at the DHQ hospital were identified as Hehmat Azim Sher, Mashooq Khan, Zahid Hafeez, Tanveer Ahmed, Qamar Zaman, Imtiaz, Abdul Aziz, and Mohammad Saeed. However, the police have taken the owner of the godown Haji Saeed into custody.