Rescuers in the town of West, Texas are searching door-to-door for survivors and casualties of a massive explosion at a fertiliser factory today, local media have reported.

Hundreds have been injured and an unknown number killed in the fiery explosion at a fertiliser plant near Waco, which was reported around 8pm Wednesday (1pm Thursday NZT) in the small town of West.

Local news station KWTX reported nine people – six firefighters, two paramedics and a police officer – were confirmed dead, citing West emergency services director Dr George Smith.

Seven nursing home residents and a city official were among the missing, Smith said.

He added that more bodies were likely to be found as damaged and destroyed homes were searched. Earlier in the evening he said as many as 70 people may have been killed in the blast.

The local sheriff described the town as “a war zone” following the explosion.

“It’s a lot of devastation. I’ve never seen anything like this,” McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara told Reuters.

“It looks like a war zone with all the debris.”

“It was a like a nuclear bomb went off,” West Mayor Tommy Muska told CNN.

“Big old mushroom cloud. There are a lot of people that got hurt. There are a lot of people that will not be here tomorrow.”

The blast damaged or destroyed numerous buildings, including dozens of homes and a nursing home, authorities said.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, D.L. Wilson, told Reuters the blast had resulted in “probably hundreds of casualties,” saying he did not know if any of those were fatalities.

There has been no immediate official word on what sparked the deadly explosion.

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RIP to the dead