2014-12-31
Investigators check the damage inside a building at the scene of a gas explosion at a factory in Foshan in southern China’s Guangdong province, Dec. 31, 2014.
AFP
Seventeen people were killed and 33 others were injured in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on Wednesday after a series of gas explosions tore through an auto-parts factory.
The explosions ripped through the Fuwa Engineering Manufacturing Co. factory in Foshan city’s Shunde district at about 9:30 a.m., official Chinese media reported.
Three of the injured were seriously injured, while three are in critical condition, China’s Xinhua news agency quoted local officials as saying.
The explosions, which were described by Xinhua as “gas blasts,” occurred while the factory was closed for cleaning, it said.
An employee who answered the phone at a company nearby said he had heard the blasts.
“I was working at the time, and we heard two huge sounds like ‘bam, bam!” he said.
A Shunde resident surnamed Liu said he had also heard the blasts from about three miles away.
“There were two or three blasts that sounded as if people were letting off fireworks,” Liu said. “After I heard the explosions, then all the police and fire engines vehicles came rushing past.”
“The police sealed off several roads after that, so nobody could see what was going on,” he said.
‘A battlefield’
According to tweets posted to China’s popular Twitter-like service Sina Weibo, ambulances soon began to head to the scene from across the district.
“I am at the Leliu Hospital, and hospitals across the district are sending out ambulances and bringing [the injured] back to the Leliu Hospital,” one Weibo user tweeted on Wednesday.
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