Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 17, 2003
Two fireworks blasts kill 9, injure 18 in Guangxi
A second fireworks explosion claimed five lives and left another 13 people seriously injured Saturday night in Beihai City of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The site of the blast is just less than 10 km from that of similar explosion Saturday morning.
A second fireworks explosion claimed five lives and left another 13 people seriously injured Saturday night in Beihai City of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The site of the blast is just less than 10 km from that of similar explosion Saturday morning.
The second explosion occurred at about 8:40 p.m. Saturday in a fireworks workshop in Gongguan Town of Beihai. The first explosion happened also at a fireworks workshop Saturday morning in the same town, killing four and seriously injuring five.
All the injured in the two explosions had been hospitalized and doctors said they were in a critical condition.
The causes of the blasts are still under investigation and local government officials have rushed to the sites to guide rescuing work.
According to local police, the first explosion occurred at about 8:50 a.m. Saturday at an illegal fireworks workshop and the owner Guan Guoshou is now at large. The second happened at Guangxi's largest fireworks enterprise, where a blast happened in September this year killed seven people. Gongguan town is known as the hometown of fireworks, and there is a profusion of illegal fireworks workshops in and around the town.
Since October this year, the local government has cracked down on these workshops and closed 121 illegal ones and detained four people.