Twelve people died and 39 others were injured in an explosion at a nickel processing factory in Indonesia.
The accident occurred at around 5:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. Italian time yesterday) at a Pt Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel factory in the industrial center of Morowali on the island of Sulawesi, the industrial district's spokesman Dedy Kurniawan announced in a statement. “The current number of victims is 51, of which 12 are dead and 39 have injuries of varying severity,” he said. The dead included seven Indonesian workers and five foreigners, the spokesman added, without specifying their nationality. According to an initial reconstruction of the accident, the explosion occurred during repair work on a blast furnace. A flammable liquid leaked and immediately caught fire, hitting workers involved in the work and also causing oxygen tanks to explode. Indonesia's Sulawesi archipelago is a major production center for nickel, a metal commonly used to make batteries for electric cars and to make stainless steel. The sector is supported by strong Chinese investment.
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