Huge China Explosions Leave Scores Dead, Hundreds Injured

Local Editor

A series of enormous explosions at an industrial area in the Chinese port of Tianjin killed at least 44 people and injured more than 500, state media reported Thursday, unleashing a fireball that ripped through the night sky.

Images showed a monumental blast soaring into the air, walls of flame enveloping buildings, ranks of burned-out cars, and shipping containers scattered like children's building blocks.

Paramedics stretchered the wounded into the city's hospitals as doctors bandaged up victims, many of them covered in blood after the impact of the explosion was felt for several kilometers, even being picked up by a Japanese weather satellite.

"The fireball was huge, maybe as much as 100 meters tall," said 27-year-old Huang Shiting, who lives close to the site.

"I heard the first explosion and everyone went outside, then there was a series of more explosions, windows shattered and a lot of people who were inside were hurt and came running out, bleeding," he told AFP.

Citing rescue headquarters, the official Xinhua news agency said 44 people were killed, including 12 firefighters.

Scores of firefighters were already on the scene before the explosion, responding to reports of a fire, and at one city hospital a doctor wept over the remains of a firefighter still in uniform, his skin blackened from smoke, as he was wheeled past, along with two other bodies.

Xinhua said 520 people had been hospitalized, 66 of them in critical condition.
Plumes of smoke still billowed over buildings hours after the blast, which occurred shortly before midnight local time.

Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily said in a social media post that there were people trapped by the fire, but CCTV said efforts to put out the blaze had been suspended as it was not clear what dangerous items remained in the storage facility.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team