A powerful explosion yesterday hit China’s major port city of Ningbo, killing at least two people, injuring more than a dozen and wrecking buildings, authorities said.
Cars were twisted and mangled by the force of the blast, a plume of gray smoke rose in the sky and debris was scattered for dozens of meters.
However, there was no official word on its cause.
Photo: AFP
The Ningbo government said on a social media account that the blast occurred in a “vacant lot.”
Local authorities said two people died, two were seriously injured and an unidentified number were being treated for lesser injuries in one of China’s largest ports, just south of Shanghai.
State media said more than 30 people were taken to hospital.
The Xinhua news agency said the explosion happened in a demolished factory at about 9am.
A later statement by the city’s Jiangbei District, the scene of the blast, said 16 people were still being treated for minor injuries while an undisclosed number had left the hospital.
China Central Television said that no one else was believed to be trapped in the rubble.
Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety standards are often lax.
Aerial images posted on Twitter by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily showed at least four wrecked buildings around a wasteland of debris.
Helmeted rescuers were seen carrying injured people away from the area, while others stood over a person lying on the ground.
Pieces of concrete, wood and glass were strewn across a wide area. Metal gates were twisted open and windows were blown out of buildings.
The explosion sent chunks of masonry flying around the area, where buildings were already being demolished, according to the Beijing newspaper Xinjing Bao.
The People’s Daily said on Twitter that no one lived at the scene, but garbage collectors might have been working there.
An inquiry has been launched to determine the cause of the explosion, the Jiangbei District police said on social media.
Ningbo is one of the country’s major international container shipping ports.
China has been rocked by several industrial accidents in recent years.
In 2015 giant blasts killed at least 165 people in the northern port city of Tianjin, causing more than US$1 billion in damage and sparking widespread anger at a perceived lack of transparency over the accident’s causes and its environmental effects.
A government inquiry into the Tianjin accident released in February last year recommended that 123 people be punished.
The official who was mayor at the time of the accident was in September sentenced to 12 years in prison for graft.
Huang Xingguo (黃興國), 62, had also headed the disaster response committee.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats