At least 17 people, including ten women and two children, were killed and 30 injured as a major fire ripped through a factory in north Delhi of India last night.

17 bodies have been recovered and that more people are suspected to be trapped inside the factory in Bawana industrial area, our correspondent from New Delhi reports quoting fire services officials. 

The victims were mostly labourers, they said.

There was a rubber factory on the second storey of the two-storey building and an illegal firecracker factory on the ground floor.

Thirty people have been working in the fire cracker factory when the fire broke out on the ground floor of the building. 

Fire officials suspect that phosphorous used for manufacturing fire crackers may have triggered the blaze, the correspondent said.

The owner of the illegal fire cracker factory has been arrested. police said.