SAO PAULO (Reuters) -At least eight people have died, one was missing and nearly a dozen others wounded after a silo exploded on Wednesday at an agricultural co-operative in southern Brazil, the government of Parana state said in a statement on Thursday.
The blast occurred at the C.Vale co-operative in the small town of Palotina, about 600 kilometers (373 miles) away from the state’s capital Curitiba. Parana is one of Brazil’s top grain producing states.
It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion.
C.Vale, which stores grains in 125 units across five Brazilian states and in Paraguay, said in a separate statement that rescue workers were still scouring the rubble in a search for the missing person on Thursday.
It noted that nearly a dozen people had been hospitalized, excluding the fatalities.
“I’m deeply saddened by what happened at C.Vale,” Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro wrote on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “I express my condolences to the families of the victims.”
Acting Parana Governor Darci Piana headed to Palotina, a city of some 35,000 people, alongside state secretaries to follow the rescue operations and provide support to the families, the government said.
(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Christina Fincher and Bernadette Baum)
