Huge blaze breaks out at steel plant near Haneda airport

Tokyo

A huge blaze broke out at steel plant near Tokyo's Haneda airport, a fire department official said, as television images showed plumes of thick black smoke and flames shooting up into the air.

"A fire broke out from a two-metre cooling tower," the fire official said without elaborating. The site is owned by a unit of giant steelmaker Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, which declined to make an immediate comment.

The blaze comes hours after a blast ripped through a warehouse at a US military post near Tokyo, sending sparks shooting into the sky and triggering a blaze that burned through the night, although there were no reports of injuries.

Tokyo police declined to speculate on whether there was any link between the two incidents. "We do not know any details at this point," a police spokesman told AFP on the question of any connection.