25 Oct 2013

Huge explosion rocks Mexican sweet factory

3:27 pm on 25 October 2013

A huge explosion at a sweet factory in northern Mexico has killed at least one person, injured dozens of people and badly damaged the building.

About 3000 people were working at the Blueberry factory in an industrial park in Ciudad Juarez, a large city on the US border, when a boiler exploded.

Officials say the second-floor ceiling of the factory crashed and the explosion completely destroyed a side wall of the building.

"We're still searching the area to see if there are more dead," says the head of the city's emergency services, Fernando Motta.

He said 11 people were badly injured, four of whom are in critical condition. Thirty people have been treated for minor injuries.

A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says about 20 people who normally work at the plant are still unaccounted for, but it's not clear if they were in the building at the time of the blast.