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One of the four men who suffered serious injuries in a blast at an explosives factory in Pardubice on Friday morning has died, the factory’s spokesman told the Czech News Agency on Sunday. Another two remain in a critical condition in Prague’s Vinohrady hospital. Both of them were placed in an intensive-care unit and remain in an induced coma.

The explosion occurred at the Explosia plant, which manufactures the plastic explosive Semtex, often used in terrorist attacks because of its high performance and easy use.

Three people who suffered serious injuries in a blast at an explosives factory in Pardubice on Friday morning remain in a critical condition in Prague’s Vinohrady hospital. All of them were placed in an intensive-care unit and remain in an induced coma.

The explosion occurred at the Explosia plant, which manufactures the plastic explosive Semtex, often used in terrorist attacks because of its high performance and easy use.

Czech police carried out of one of the biggest seizures of illegal explosives in the country’s history last week, spokesman Pavel Hanták announced on Wednesday. Three simultaneous raids took place last week in the regions of Pardubice, Hradec Králové and Prague. More than 100 kilograms of poisons, toxic materials and explosives, including Semtex, were seized during the operation. Police also arrested four men, who were allegedly planning to sell the explosives on the black market.

Just four months after a devastating explosion damaged the munitions depot in Vrbětice, south Moravia, inspectors have found another potentially dangerous storage site. A storage facility on the grounds of a former agrarian cooperative in Slatina, north of Brno, was found to contain hundreds of tons of unregistered munition, including the lethal Czech made-explosive Semtex.

The former Palestinian ambassador in Prague, Muhammad Jamal, who died in an explosion on New Year’s Day, was killed by a semtex charge concealed in a book, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes reported on Tuesday quoting police sources. An investigator told the paper the police was now only working with one version of what happened; the Palestinian diplomat was going through old things at the embassy with no knowledge there were two explosive charges among them. The police said last month he died after the charge exploded in his hands. The police are reportedly nearly 100 percent positive the explosive was the Czechoslovak-made semtex from the 1970s.

Spotlight this week comes from Pardubice, which lies about an hour away from Prague in east Bohemia. The pretty Renaissance buildings on Pernštýnovo náměstí and the impressive chateau nearby give an indication of this town’s long and rich history, which saw it evolve from a prosperous hamlet in the Middle Ages to an industrial powerhouse by the start of the 20th century.

Four employees of the Semtex-manufacturing company Explosia who went missing after a powerful explosion at the plant in April have been officially confirmed dead. DNA tests on remains found amidst the debris reportedly confirmed the identity of the four missing workers. An investigation into what caused the powerful nitro-glycerine explosion is still underway. The blast damaged only part of the building and the factory resumed operation shortly after.

The emergency rescue services say there is little chance that four people, missing after an accident at in explosives plant in east Bohemia on Wednesday, could still be found alive. A huge explosion, heard as far as 20 kilometres away, levelled a building at Explosia in the Pardubice area. Fire fighters and rescue teams with sniffer dogs laboured for seven hours to find any sign of the four, who are believed to be buried under the rubble. In the blast, eight others suffered slight injuries: seven were treated on site by ambulance personnel. Their injuries included cuts from broken glass while two people had suffered shock. Explosia said the accident involved nitroglycerin, used as an agent in explosives manufacture. Fire fighters called off the search on Wednesday afternoon when it was hampered by the danger of additional explosions. The search for the missing is to resume on Thursday.

Million-dollar airport scanners get a run for their money from a small, Czech-made device that can sniff out even the smallest traces of explosive and radioactive materials.

Czech and Slovak police units specialized in fighting organized crime announced on Tuesday they had arrested six members of a gang which sold weapons and explosives to the underworld in the Czech Republic and abroad. During raids at a number of Czech and Slovak locations police confiscated a vast amount of weapons and explosives.