The Associated Press
By Kwang-Tae Kim

AP Photo/Shin Young-keun Firefighters work to extinguish the fire, Monday.

SEOUL, South Korea — Forty workers died Monday after a fire and explosions ripped through a nearly completed cold storage warehouse south of Seoul, most of the victims so badly burned they could not immediately be identified.

All of the dead were discovered in the basement of the burned out warehouse, said Kim Jung-geun, a local fire official in Icheon about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital.

A total of 10 people were injured and taken to hospitals to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation, Kim said. Another seven people at the site at the time of the fire escaped the building.

Among the dead were 13 ethnic Koreans with Chinese nationality, Yonhap news agency reported. Kim and other police and fire officials said they could not confirm that report.

A doctor at Bestian Medical Center in Seoul, which specializes in burn treatment, said four of the injured were in intensive care with burns to more than 40 percent of their bodies.

The physician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing patient confidentiality, said one of the four was an ethic Korean from China.

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Seoul could not be reached late Monday after business hours.

China has a sizable ethnic Korean minority and in recent years some have migrated to South Korea to seek work. Like other foreign migrants, they often end up working in factories or doing difficult and low-paying work that affluent South Koreans have increasingly shunned.

Kim said that the warehouse fire started at 10:45 a.m. (0145 GMT), though its exact cause remained unclear.

Workers at the site were injecting urethane foam into the walls of the facility in the basement when the fire started, he said.

Kim said it was known, however, that explosions heard at the site were caused by the fire, not the other way around. He said arson was not suspected.

The badly burned condition of the bodies made identification difficult, he said. Only one of the dead had been positively identified, he said.

The fire was extinguished late Monday night. None of the more than 500 firefighters who battled the conflagration were injured.

Police were investigating but had to yet to find an exact cause, said a detective working on the case. He asked not to be named as the investigation was still under way.

Cable news channel YTN showed black-clad firefighters battling thick black, brown and white smoke, some of it spewing from underground. Hoses atop fire trucks also shot water toward the building.

An official at Korea 2000, a logistics company that owns the facility, said that the building had been under construction and was intended to be used for refrigeration.

The official said workers were applying the final touches to the facility when the fire broke out. She requested anonymity, saying company rules prohibit employees from speaking to the media, and offered no other details.

It remained unclear what kinds of things would have been kept in cold storage at the site. Yonhap reported that it was due to open Saturday.

A witness to the fire, identified only by her family name Song, told YTN that there were several huge bangs as the fire broke out, shaking the building and breaking the windows of a building next door.

Fire official Ahn Hye-wan said that the warehouse was located in an industrial district in Icheon. The closest homes were more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) away, he said.

Kim said that an evacuation order had been issued, though he had no figure for how many people were affected.

Icheon, through which some of South Korea's major highways pass, is home to Hynix Semiconductor Inc., the world's second-largest manufacturer of computer memory chips.

It was not immediately known where the death toll ranked among the worst fires in South Korean history.

A total of 198 people died and 147 were injured in 2003 in the city of Daegu when an arsonist ignited a carton filled with gasoline on a six-car subway train.