NEW DELHI: Sixteen people, including two army officers, died in a fire at the army’s biggest ammunition depot in Pulgaon in Maharashtra on Tuesday, the Indian Express said.

Seventeen people, including two army officers and nine personnel, were injured in the accident, which occurred at 1am.

The cause of the fire could not be ascertained immediately.

“Actions to assess the damage are in progress. An inquiry has been ordered by the army,” the paper quoted Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, Director General of Military Operations, as saying.

The Central Ammunition Depot (CAD), Pulgaon, located about 115km from Nagpur, is spread over an area of more than 7,000 acres and stores a variety of ammunition and explosives in a large number of sheds, the Express said. The depot comes directly under the army headquarters and is responsible for the all-India supply of ammunition and explosives, after receiving them from Ordnance factories and other sources.

The CAD then supplies these items to various ammunition depots and field ammunition depots for replenishing their stocks.

The fire started in one of the sheds at 1am and the quick reaction teams and fire-fighting teams restricted it to that one shed.

In the initial efforts to extinguish the fire, two army officers, one army jawan and 13 civilian fire-fighting staff lost their lives, the paper said.

The shed where the fire started contained highly sensitive ammunition, sources said.

“The army officially refused to comment on what was kept in the sheds,” the Express said.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2016