Hyderabad/Chennai, Feb. 23: At least six people were killed and six suffered serious burn injuries in an explosion at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, 100 km north of Chennai, this afternoon.

Police officials in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district said the explosion was caused by a small fire at the solid propellant rocket booster plant, one of the main facilities at the Dhawan centre. A launch pad motor was being filled with highly inflammable fuel for a test when it caught fire. The cause of the fire is not known.

Three people were charred to death on the spot and three more succumbed to their burn injuries as they were being rushed to a Chennai hospital.

Top Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) officials have reached the accident site. Isro has appointed a committee to investigate the cause of the fire, the first such major accident during the filling of motors with fuel in the centre’s history. Its chairman G. Madhavan Nambiar has flown to Chennai from the Bangalore headquarters en route to Sriharikota.

Officials said the accident occurred around 4 pm when technicians and scientists returned after lunch and continued to load fuel in the test motors.

Villagers around the centre heard an explosion and then saw fire coming out of a building. Many complained that gas had leaked from the damaged fuel storage tanks, but authorities denied the reports.

The Nellore district collector and the police superintendent who rushed to the centre are supervising relief and damage-control measures. They were also trying to make villagers understand there was no threat to human and animal life from the alleged gas leak.

The Dhawan centre is used to launch India’s indigenous launch vehicles that hurl the country’s remote sensing and communication satellites into space. The centre has launch vehicle assembly and static test operations, range operations and liquid storage and service facilities, besides the rocket boosters plant where the explosion occurred.