Death toll from shooting range fire rises to 12

A Japanese tourist died of heart failure on Sunday after being treated for severe burns from a blaze at an indoor shooting range in Busan, bringing the incident`s death toll to 12, police said, the Yonhap reported.



Kazunobu Nakao, 37, died around 5:20 a.m. at Hana Hospital. He has been at the hospital since the Nov. 14 blaze, which has so far claimed eight Japanese and four Korean lives.



At the hospital, four more people -- three Japanese tourists and one Korean -- are being treated for burns. Three of the four, excluding Japanese tourist Masaru Kasahara, are in critical condition, police said.



The Japanese people were visiting the shooting range on a group tour.

On Wednesday, investigators said the fire appeared to have started from an explosion in the shooting booths area deep inside the range.

"After carrying out three extensive on-site investigations, we believe that there was a huge blast inside the range, and that was the point of the ignition," Kim Young-shik, chief investigator of the incident, said in a press briefing.

But the exact cause of the explosion is still unknown, Kim said.