(Adds report on death and injuries)
BUCHAREST (Romania), August 14 (SeeNews) - An explosion at a chemical plant of majority state-owned Romanian petrochemical group Oltchim left one dead and seven injured on Tuesday, a local health authority official said.
"One of the people injured in today's incident died at 17:00 (1400 GMT). Another will be under 24-hour supervision", an official from the Public Health Authority office in Ramnicu Valcea city, southwestern Romania, where Oltchim is located, told SeeNews.
Oltchim officials were not immediately available to comment further on the explosion, which led to the suspension of trading in its shares on the Bucharest Stock exchange (BVB), although the company's general director had earlier told a television channel there was no major damage.
"Oltchim was suspended from trading because of today's explosion. We have requested a report from Oltchim and can not offer additional Information before we receive it," BVB's CEO, Stere Farmache, told SeeNews in a statement.
Oltchim shares had lost 6.67% to 0.98 lei by 13:04 local time (1004 GMT) when trading in its shares was stopped.
Domestic TV channel Realitatea reported earlier that the explosion had left eight people injured, three of them in serious condition. "It was an explosion at a polyester [production] installation. There was no major damage... The rest of the plant is functioning normally," Constantin Roibu, general director of Oltchim, told Realitatea.
A broker told SeeNews the company's shares had been rising in early trading on Tuesday but after news of the explosion, investors started selling.
Turnover in Oltchim shares totalled some 236,000 lei ($100,000/74,000 euro) by the time of the suspension. The stock is part of the 10-share blue-chip BET index of the BVB. Oltchim also reported on Tuesday that its first-half net profit rose by 32.25% year-on-year to 9.61 million lei ($4.07 million/3.0 million euro).
(1 euro = 3.1978 Romanian lei)
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