Nov 1, 6:38 AM (ET)
By Jack Kim and Lee Jin-joo
SEOUL (Reuters) - A commercial truck carrying missile parts exploded inside a South Korean highway tunnel on Tuesday but there were no casualties, South Korean officials said.
The truck was in a four-vehicle convoy when its brakes failed on a highway linking the southern city of Taegu with Masan, just west of Pusan where a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will take place later this month.
Thirty-three fire engines rushed to the scene, where thick smoke and flames billowed from the tunnel entrances.
The Air Force said later that the fire had been put out and an investigation to determine the exact cause was under way.
"No human casualties were reported, and the 15-ton truck and a guided missile propulsion device aboard were incinerated," the statement said.
Officials said the tunnel, closer to Taegu on the 80-km (50-mile) highway, was still blocked.
Officials said that Korea Express commercial cargo trucks had been moving the missile parts, which belonged to the South Korean military, from a South Korean Air Force base to Taegu.
Along with the South's 690,000 troops, the United States maintains more than 30,000 troops in the country.
Sparks flew from one of the brakes on the truck as it failed and caught fire in the cargo compartment, a highway patrol officer told the YTN television broadcaster.
A retired South Korean general told YTN that it was unlikely a propulsion device, although loaded with a detonator and fuel, would explode simply from heat and fire, suggesting that it was the truck that caused the accident rather than the missile parts.
(Additional reporting by Rhee So-eui, Kim Miyoung, Park Sung-woo, Kim Yeon-hee and Jon Herskovitz)
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