The death toll in a huge explosion at a chemical fertiliser factory in Toulouse rose to 29 today and angry residents and environmental campaigners renewed demands that the site be closed.
Around 400 firefighters working through the night recovered six more bodies while a badly wounded man died in hospital overnight.
Toulouse mayor Mr Philippe Douste-Blazy said this morning that the death toll had risen to 26 people, with 20 people found at the site of the plant and six in the surrounding area.
More than 650 were in hospital following yesterday’s apparent accident, which residents initially feared was a terrorist attack similar to those on the United States.
Among those killed at the AZF chemicals plant were workers, shoppers at stores adjoining the factory and a 15-year-old schoolboy.
Rescue efforts were interrupted at about 3 a.m. Irish time when workers found a nitric acid tank with a feared leak, but recovery work in the shell of the ruined plant resumed a little over an hour later.
A spokesman for the local Haute-Garonne region said 658 people had been hospitalized, about 50 of them with serious injuries, while some 600 others were treated for slight wounds and sent home.
The plant site was operated by a company called Grande Paroisse, which in turn is majority-owned by Atofina, a specialist unit of the Franco-Belgian TotalFinaElf group.
According to the Institute of Global Physics in Strasbourg, the explosion measured measured 3.4 on the Richter scale, which is normally used to measure earthquakes.
AFP