At least eight people were killed and 74 others injured on Wednesday in a blast at a pesticides factory in western India, authorities said.

Almost 5,000 people living in two villages near the plant in the Bharuch district of Gujarat state were evacuated as a precaution after a storage tank exploded, local official M D Modia said.

"The blaze is now under control," he said late Wednesday.

He said earlier that there was "no gas leakage and hence no threat" to the nearby population.

Industrial accidents are common in India due to sometimes lax safety standards. Many factories are currently resuming operations as India's coronavirus lockdown is eased.

Last month 12 people were killed in a gas leak at a chemicals plant in Visakhapatnam in eastern India owned by South Korea's LG Chem.

European police net record fake pesticide haul
The Hague (AFP) June 3, 2020 - European police have seized more than a thousand tonnes of illegal pesticides across the continent in what it said Wednesday was a record haul, enough to spray all farmlands in Germany.

Operation Silver Axe V run between January and April this year led to the confiscation of 1,346 tonnes of illegal pesticides, Europol said.

"This quantity could be enough to spray more than all the farmland in Germany which accounts for nearly half the country, almost 75 percent of farmland in France or more than 150 percent of the farmland of Romania," it said in a statement.

Many of the components for the pesticides originated in Asia, particularly China and Japan, but also from Mexico and the United States, said Europol expert Rien van Diesen.

But the actual product is now produced in Europe, mainly to give suspicious customs and other law enforcement officers the slip, van Diesen said.

"What we see now is that they changed their tactics. They make the active substance in the pesticide ready to use in the European country," as opposed to previously smuggling in the finished product, he said.

Fake pesticides have the potential to severely damage crops, pollute the environment and be harmful to health, Europe's policing agency said.

Many are also extremely flammable and can combust as low as room temperature, Van Diesen added.

The fake pesticides are being stored as chemical waste and would be destroyed soon, Van Diesen said.

Investigations are still ongoing in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Switzerland, Europol said.

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