At least nine people have been killed and several hundred admitted to local hospitals after a gas leak at a chemicals plant on the east coast of India, police said on Thursday.

Swarupa Rani, an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Visakhapatnam, told Reuters that at least nine people had died and between 300-400 were hospitalised. Another 1,500 people had been evacuated, mostly from a neighbouring village.

The commissioner of the Visakhapatnam city corporation said styrene leaked from the plant during the early hours of the morning, when families in the surrounding villages were asleep.

Srijana Gummalla told Reuters that the plant had been reopened in the past few days after India relaxed a nationwide lockdown, that had been imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

South Korean battery maker LG Chemical Ltd, the owner of the facility, located around 14 kilometers away from Visakhapatnam city, said the gas leak had been brought under control.

“We are looking into the exact damages, cause of the death and details of the incident,” the company said in a statement.

Rani earlier told AFP news agency that the gas leaked out of two 5,000-tonne tanks of the plant located in Andhra Pradesh state.

“We received an emergency call from the local villagers around 3:30am local time [22:00 GMT] in the morning today. They said there was some gas in the air,” she said.

“We reached there immediately. One could feel the gas in the air and it was not possible for any of us to stay there for more than a few minutes. Prepared rescue workers started working from around 4am [22:30 GMT].”

‘People seen lying unconscious on the roads’
Images posted on Twitter showed emergency services including police officers, firefighters and ambulances at the location. However, Al Jazeera could not verify the authenticity of the images.

G Kishan Reddy, the deputy home minister, told Indian news agency ANI that the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams have been asked to provide immediate relief measures.

Areas within an approximately three-kilometer (nearly 2-mile) radius of the plant were vulnerable, the municipal corporation said in a tweet.

In an interview with local news channel NDTV, SN Pradhan, director-general of the National Disaster Response Force, said the situation is now under control at the site.

“The gas leakage has been stopped and the quantities should now be more manageable and we should be able to evacuate people to safety,” said Pradhan.

According to the Times of India newspaper, the incident led to panic among locals with many people seen lying unconscious on the roads.

Others were having breathing problems and complained of rashes on their body and sore eyes, it added.

Ambulances were shown arriving to collect the injured on the roadside to take them to hospitals in the area.

India witnessed in December 1984 one of the worst industrial disasters in history when gas leaked from a pesticide plant in the central city of Bhopal.

Around 3,500 people, mainly in shanties around the plant operated by Union Carbide, died in the days that followed and thousands more in the following years. People continue to suffer its after-effects today.

Government statistics say that at least 100,000 people living near the Union Carbide plant have been victims of chronic illnesses.

Survivors still suffer from ailments such as respiratory and kidney problems, hormonal imbalances, mental illness and several forms of cancer.

Source: Al Jazeera