Six people including a child were killed by an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory yesterday in southern Tainan county, according to reports last night.
The blast at around 5:30pm demolished the factory near the town of Yenshui (鹽水), 300km south of Taipei, which was swarming with tens of thousands of visitors a day before an annual fireworks festival.
``The loud explosion could be heard 3km away,'' a state radio report said.
Police found the body of 12-year-old Li Ching-chieh (李靖傑) at the site of the explosion.
The couple who runs the factory and four of their employees are unaccounted for. Police found body parts scattered in an adjacent field.
TV footage showed colored scrap paper and fireworks fuses spread over a wide area in a sugarcane field next to the factory. Yenshui is known for its annual parade when townspeople carry fireworks that shoot from beehive-like boxes to drive away evil spirits.
The parade is held on the Lantern Festival, which ends a 15-day celebration of the Lunar New Year. The festival begins tonight.
Tseng Hsu-cheng (曾旭正), deputy commissioner of Tainan County, said an initial investigation showed that the accident could have been caused by careless construction of the beehive rocket-launchers built for the event. He did not elaborate.
Tseng said the county government would step up inspections of the rocket launchers. But he added that the accident would not affect the fireworks festival, which was scheduled for today.
In recent years, Taiwan has enforced strict rules that ban fireworks except on certain festivals. But authorities have promoted the fireworks parade in Yenshui as a tourist attraction.
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