An unmanned work vehicle burned up early Friday at a steel plant of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. in Oita, firefighters and police said.
The vehicle caught fire near a coke oven shortly past 12:30 a.m. and the fire was extinguished at around 1:45 a.m., they said. No damages to the building or injuries were reported in the incident, and an investigation about the cause is in progress.
It was the fifth fire at the plant this year, including a major fire in early January in a power equipment room of a facility to produce thick sheet steel, which took about 35 hours to put out.