One person died after a fire broke out in a cluster of shops near Madhyamgram railway station in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district on Wednesday, officials said.

The body of an employee of a sweetmeat shop was recovered from the gutted outlet, after fire services personnel managed to douse the flames and get inside, they said.

The blaze erupted in the sweetmeat shop around 2 pm and quickly spread to the adjacent ones, a fire brigade official said.

"A total of eight-nine shops were engulfed in flames fuelled by an explosion of LPG cylinders stored inside. Most of the shops were food outlets," he said.

Three fire tenders managed to put out the blaze, which partially disrupted vehicular movement along the busy Sodepur-Madhyamgram Road near the station, the official said.

Traffic along the adjacent Madhyamgram flyover was also disrupted for some time following the blaze, he said.

There was, however, no threat to the railway station premises or train movement, a district official said.

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