AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI: Five people were killed and at least two injured Saturday in a gas explosion at Asia’s largest ship-breaking yard on the west coast of India, police said. The explosion occurred in a chemical tank while the workers were dismantling the old vessel at the Alang ship-breaking yard in Gujarat state, said police officer Ramesh Budhrejiya.

“Five people have died following the explosion due to gas leakage in the ship on which they were working,” Maninder Pratap Singh Pawar, a senior police officer from Bhavnagar district, told AFP.

The blast was believed to have been caused by a sudden gas leakage which also started a fire, the Press Trust of India quoted police officer K. J. Rathod as saying.

The ship-breaking yard is nearly 1,100 km west of New Delhi.

Two weeks ago, six people were killed and 29 more injured in an explosion and a subsequent gas pipeline leak at a government-run steel plant in central India.