Nearly 70 Dead, 160 Injured in Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion

President Barack Obama

The death toll in an explosion that rocked a fertilizer factory in Texas, United States on Wednesday has been put at between 60 and 70 by local emergency managers in the city.

More than 160 people were also injured and three to four firefighters were missing or unaccounted for, officials told CNN.

Though the AFP news agency said it could not immediately verify the report, it cited local KWTX television as saying that the West Emergency Management Services Director, George Smith, confirmed the death toll.

The explosion occurred just as the US was trying to pull through the deadly explosions that hit the Boston marathon on Monday, followed by letters, apparently poisoned with ricin, sent to President Barack Obama and a US senator.

Firefighters responding to the scene at West were also injured in a secondary blast, according to radio traffic by emergency managers broadcast by CBS News.

“There has been an explosion on the fire scene, there are firefighters down at this time,” a dispatcher said.

A man at the scene reported that: “The restroom is severely damaged we have many people down.”

Firefighters also said they were setting up a triage unit at an apartment building where people were trapped.

The explosion at the West Fertilizer plant occurred just before 8p.m., Waco assistant fire chief, Don Yeager, told AFP on the phone.

The cause was not immediately known but he said it was an anhydrous ammonia explosion.

Fire departments from nearby jurisdictions rushed to the scene in the small town of West, north of Waco, where the blast was so powerful that it knocked down some nearby buildings, and set fire to others.

“An explosion has ignited adjacent structures to the plant,” Yeager said.

The injured were rushed to local hospitals.

Neighbours told the local media that their windows were blown out by the force of the explosion.

“It was a small fire and then water got sprayed the ammonia nitrate, and it exploded just like the Oklahoma City bomb,” Jason Shelton, a clerk at the Czech Best Western Hotel in West, told The Dallas Morning News.