At least 100 dead as blaze destroys Indian trade fair

AT least 100 people were killed when flames engulfed a crowded trade fair in the north Indian city of Meerut, police said.

"At least 100 people are dead," Rajiv Sabarwal, police chief at Meerut, 80 kilometres north of New Delhi, said yesterday.

Witnesses said bodies were charred beyond recognition and scattered throughout the stalls of the exhibition ground. Badly burnt bodies of men, women and children had been dumped in the back of trucks, police inspector Rakesh Tomar said, adding that the death toll could rise significantly.

Television footage showed blackened steel frames were all that remained of the tents that had been erected at the fair.

Plumes of thick black smoke billowed into the air as rescue workers tried to get the injured to hospital.

"We have so far removed 45 bodies to the mortuary," district police chief Raj

Kumar Vishwakarma told Star news television.

Paramilitary troops backed fire fighters and police tackling the massive fire, he said.

The blaze destroyed three giant exhibition tents at the Brand India Fair at the city's Victoria Park, where companies displayed products for throngs of shoppers.

Confusion reigned as large crowds milled around the stalls in Meerut, which has a population of more than one million people and is well-known as the site of the outbreak of the 1857 mutiny against British rule.

Witnesses described a scene of horror, with injured people screaming, three enormous tents destroyed and rescuers pulling out corpse after corpse.

"Dead bodies are strewn around, most of them are charred beyond recognition.

"The bodies were dumped into trucks, jeeps and ambulances and taken away from public glare," said Prakash Arya, a witness.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, though a local politician, Laxmikant Bajpai, told the TV station Headlines Today that it may have started when plastic sheeting hanging over an air-conditioning unit caught fire.

Trade fairs, where manufacturers and traders set up stalls to exhibit their wares to consumers and other businesses, are common in India.

They are commonly held in elaborate cloth tents set up over interconnected bamboo poles and often with little regard for safety regulations.

The fire was the worst such accident since 90 school children were killed when a fire tore through classrooms in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in July 2004.