At least 26 people were killed, thousands were left homeless and many were trapped in the flames yesterday after a fire raged through a crowded slum district of Delhi.
A fire brigade spokesman said some 35 fire tenders were battling the fire, which was now under control.
"We can confirm 18 deaths, but the unofficial toll is higher," the spokesman said. "A long cluster along the river was affected. It could be around one kilometre or more," he said.
The blaze affected more than 1,000 huts in the Vijay Ghat area near the Yamuna river. Fire brigade personnel found it difficult to move their vehicles through the narrow lanes of the slum district.
The Press Trust of India said 26 people had died in the fire. United News of India said there were some 50,000 huts in the slum quarter.
UNI quoted police as saying that most of the charred bodies were found by rescue workers from a mosque where people had gathered to pray. The fire broke out around 3 p.m. (9.30 a.m. Irish time), it said.
Witnesses at a hospital said they had counted 17 bodies, while some victims had been moved to another hospital.
Witnesses said people threw stones and damaged fire tenders because they arrived a long time after the fire had broken out in the slum, which is heavily populated by rag-pickers and poor people who trade in junk goods and old newspapers.
"They came more than two hours after the fire started. Many huts could have been saved otherwise," a resident said.
The cause of the fire was not known, but some witnesses said they heard a loud blast which might have started the fire.
UNI quoted left-wing politicians as saying that the fire could have resulted from sabotage by right-wing opponents because it broke out shortly before the start of a public meeting against a campaign to evict the slum-dwellers because they were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
"We have strong reasons to believe that the fire might not be accidental . . . the spirit off the people galvanised by the meeting could have been a provocation for the vested interests who would like to have these poor people out of the area," UNI quoted the Communist politicians, Mr Hannan Mollah and Mr Nilotpal Basu, as saying.