22 people dead after fire rips through South Korean lithium battery factory

• A fire at a battery factory in South Korea has killed 22 mostly Chinese workers.
• Officials told Reuters the fire began after several lithium battery cells exploded.
• Concerns are growing over lithium battery fires, which can be harder to put out than regular fires. 

22 workers have died after a fire tore through a lithium battery factory in South Korea.

Local fire officials told Reuters that the fire at the Aricell battery factory in Hwaseong began after several battery cells exploded inside the warehouse.

The cause of the explosion remains unclear, but officials said that the blaze was now extinguished.

Local fire official Kim Jin-young, citing information from Aricell, told Reuters that 18 of the deceased workers had been Chinese.

He earlier said that two others had suffered burns and serious injuries, and that due to the intensity of the blaze it was difficult to identify the dead.

The fire is the deadliest in South Korea since 38 people died in a construction site near Seoul in 2020.

Videos on social media showed enormous plumes of smoke rising from the battery plant, where 102 people had been working, according to The New York Times.

Although rare, lithium battery fires can be notoriously difficult to extinguish. A Tesla "Megapack" that caught fire in Australia in 2021 took 150 firefighters four days to put out.

Last year, a container ship carrying nearly 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries was forced to remain moored off the coast of Alaska after a fire broke out on board.

Korea's National Fire Agency and Aricell did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal working hours.