Three hotel employees and four sanitation workers died on Saturday after inhaling toxic fumes while cleaning sewer of a hotel in Vadodara district, officials said.

The incident happened shortly after midnight in Dabhoi tehsil, around 30 km from Vadodara city, the police said.

'The sanitation workers had been brought to clean the sewer. When one worker did not come out of the manhole, the others went inside to check, but all of them died,' the district collector in-charge, Kiran Zaveri, said.

'Teams from the fire brigade from Vadodara Municipal Corporation and Dabhoi civic body started rescue work. They took out the bodies of the deceased after three hours,' he said.

After the post-mortem, the bodies were handed over to the kin of the deceased.

The owner of the hotel, Hassan Abbas Ismail Boraniya, is untraceable.

BJP MLA Shailesh Mehta, who represents the Dabhoi Assembly constituency, said the four sanitation workers were from the nearby Thuvavi village and were hired to clean the sewer lines.

He said the incident shows disregard for the safety of workers.

The Gujarat government has announced financial assistance of Rs 4 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.